


Act IV

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of when Sherlock gets shot, Angst, Drama, HLV fix-it, His Last Vow fix-it, Infidelity, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Set during and after His Last Vow, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:37:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock is shot, John moves back into Baker Street. They spend the autumn together as John tries to make sense of his life and make some important decisions about both Mary and Sherlock. Canon-compliant, excerpts from <i>His Last Vow</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Act IV

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Акт IV](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752857) by [Bothersome_Arya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bothersome_Arya/pseuds/Bothersome_Arya)



> Translation into Russian by sihaya now available here: http://sherlockbbc.diary.ru/p186827643.htm

**Act IV**

 

I watch until a tongue of flame flickers around the corner of the pine log, a darker, duller orange than the others. When I’m satisfied that the wood has caught properly on fire, I sit back on my heels, then push myself carefully to my feet. I’ve been home from the hospital two days now and know very well that if John were to notice me struggling, he’ll make me go right back. We’ve already had a bit of a row over my having left when I did the first time. The second time took a bit of convincing as it was. John said that shots like mine normally take a good four to six weeks of recovery time – in the hospital, not at home, he’d interrupted when I opened my mouth to say just that. As it is, John made me stay for a full ten days more before getting tired of my escaping from the room when he wasn’t there to watch, and finally agreed that I could come home. I know precisely how stubborn John can be at the best of times and this is far from the best of times for John. I want to stay where I am, so I’m careful now, lowering myself cautiously into my chair. 

John is already staring into the flames, his face pensive. He’s done a lot of this since we’ve got back. After the night of the big revelation, John has moved back and forth between the hospital and Baker Street – not his flat in the suburbs – and it appears that he’s going to stay, at least for the time being. I’m privately very glad of this, and wise enough not to say anything of the sort. Things are tenuous enough between us. Well: everything is tenuous for John right now. I understand. It would help John to talk things over, but he’s always preferred to process things on his own and talk about them later. In this case I’m not certain he’ll make any headway on his own, but I’m beginning to learn to keep my mouth shut unless absolutely necessary to do otherwise. So I hold my tongue and sit across from him night after night as he wrestles silently with his thoughts, the sharpness of his wedding finally easing in my own chest despite my unspoken sympathy for his predicament. 

Not long after I was delivered to the hospital for the second time, John had turned up. I was mostly too cloudy with morphine, but remembered the foggy gladness later, retaining the fact that John had come, was there with me through that hazy night, was still there in the morning, asleep in the chair next to my bed. It must have been his battlefield experience; John can sleep anywhere, in any position. At a desk, sitting on the floor, in taxis. In what appeared to be a very uncomfortable hospital visitors’ chair. For the first day or two, John barely left. I asked once if he wasn’t going to work and John had responded, shortly, “Sod work. You’ve been shot.” And I let it go. I had already put John’s chair back in the sitting room and after having been shot, was glad I’d done it in advance. The effort of dragging it down from John’s room while fighting a still-healing bullet wound in the chest likely would have proven too much. It was worth doing; John is here where he belongs, sitting across from me the way he’s always done, and although nothing is right in his life save this, his presence here in the sitting room is such a relief to the wrongness of his not having been there that I can hardly believe he actually _is_ here sometimes. Still here. Even if John’s face is full of thunder much of the time. Better do it here, in front of me. I’ve never been bothered by John’s bad moods and thoroughly understand the reasons behind this particular one. 

Within the space of my own mind, I’ve privately debated whether or not I should tell John anything more. There _is_ more, so much more, and for the first time in my life, I find myself almost wishing I didn’t know as much. I know that the plan with Mycroft is the right thing to do, but will John survive it? Will our friendship? This is the source of my niggling doubt, my recurring fear that I will lose John again, irreparably this time. 

Mycroft had come by the hospital the second day I was back in it. He’d waited until John had said that he was going to his flat for a change of clothes. I hadn’t commented on the fact that Mary would be at work then, that John had chosen a time when she would be out of the building. Not three minutes after John had left, Mycroft had slid through the door like a shadow. He’d sat down in the solitary visitors’ chair, then remarked – as if he didn’t know – “I must have just missed John. The chair’s still warm. Quite warm: he must have been here all night.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, quite obviously. What do you want?” This particular development is not his concern. It’s John’s concern and thereby mine, but my brother has no need to involve himself in this, regardless of the research he’s been collecting on his own for some time now. 

Mycroft lifted those supercilious brows of his and said, “Sherlock. Try not to be an idiot. This is bigger than you’re imagining, in your narrow-minded, self-absorbed view of this.”

I scowled. “Don’t patronise me.”

Mycroft gave me a long-suffering moment of silent reproach, then reached into his briefcase and withdrew a file. “I did tell you not to get involved. And here you are. Shot in the chest and hopelessly entangled.”

“I couldn’t stay out of this,” I snarled. “I wasn’t expecting her to be there. And he’s my best friend. I _am_ involved whether I want to be or not.”

Mycroft treated me to another long stare. “When you came to me a few nights after you first met Ms Morstan and shared your doubts about her integrity, you were speaking out of a concern for John Watson. If that is still your priority, and I assume that it is, you need to listen to me now. You need to be careful, Sherlock.”

I felt myself frowning, but didn’t object. My eyes went to the file. “What is that?”

“It’s presumably more or less the same thing that she gave John on the memory stick. Possibly less… sanitised.”

I glared at my brother. “How do you know about that? Have you bugged my flat again?”

Mycroft withdrew, looking offended. “No,” he said. “I merely observed John with it and made a deduction.”

I’d sighed then. “So you want me to read it, then,” I said. “What is it? A list of her kills? What?”

“She wasn’t CIA,” Mycroft said. “She was never with any government agency. It was all private hires. Freelance assassination.”

I realised with annoyance that he had my full attention. “And?”

“Who worked directly for James Moriarty for a large number of years,” Mycroft finished. His gaze bored into mine. “She was on site when you made your dramatic leap from St. Bart’s. It was part of her assignment, her contract, to get close to John and watch him. To insinuate herself into his life. All for one reason.”

I understood. “To get close to me.”

“Indeed.” Mycroft waited a moment, then leaned over and handed me the file. “Read it. We need to formulate a plan. John is in danger every minute that he’s out of your sight. She’s an assassin who’s just had a lengthy, deep-cover operation blown. She’ll be defensive and erratic. She’s out for blood. Her decision to track you down to the empty house in Leinster Gardens shows precisely how far she is willing to go to silence you. She needed to befriend you in order to find out which cases you were working on, watch to see if any of them were in any way related to her people.”

“She still has people, then?” I interrupted 

Mycroft favoured me with a _how can you be so stupid_ look. “Of course. She has to collect her fees from somewhere.”

“So she’s still working actively,” I said, frowning. “How can that be? John would have noticed if his _wife_ was sneaking out at night to off people. And from whom could she be collecting fees? Moriarty is dead.”

“He was not her only employer,” Mycroft reminded me. “There are others who could have reason to place an agent near you.”

“She’s pregnant,” I said. “Would she take the risk?”

“She’s not pregnant.” Mycroft nodded at the file. “Do your homework, little brother. All staged.”

“But – ” I found myself momentarily at a loss for words. “She’s married to a doctor. That makes no sense. John would know, wouldn’t he?”

Mycroft shrugged. “Not necessarily. The early stages are easily feigned.”

“But they’re _married_ ,” I objected. “How could she possibly maintain the illusion after a certain point of the pregnancy?”

“Pre-planned ‘miscarriage’, I suppose,” Mycroft said. “These things do happen. And now she could even blame the stress on John, or you. It would give her credence if she chooses to dramatically end the marriage now – although I doubt that she would. That would certainly expose her. She needs to keep the lie in place. I suspect you have at least a couple of months before she’ll stop acting wounded and penitent and move her plans into a more active phase if it becomes clear that John is not going to forgive her. We need to be ready.”

I think back on all of this now, think through the plan Mycroft and I have come up with here and there, during pockets of John’s temporary absences from the hospital. John himself had said nothing about it the entire time I was recovering. He’d kept his conversation quite minimal and on the topic of my healing. And I’d understood, and left it alone. 

Now, John shifts in his chair. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asks dully, staring into the fire rather than looking at me. 

Perhaps ten minutes have passed since I lit it, during which neither of us have spoken. I’m almost startled to hear him speak now. “No more so than most people,” I say in an effort at levity. The effort is a bit forced; I know that John won’t appreciate it and I am correct. 

His brow darkens with anger. “Please don’t joke about this. It’s not funny at all. Not one fucking bit.”

“No,” I agree swiftly. “It’s not. I’m sorry.” Pause. “And no, I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“I must be, though,” John says. Can see small tongues of fire reflected in his eyes, leaping and dying away. “Everything I believed about her was a lie.”

(How much so, John doesn’t even know yet.) “Have you read the memory stick?”

“No.” John is flat. “I haven’t. I don’t want to.” He sighs heavily. “What am I supposed to do now? Seriously, Sherlock, what? I’ve done nothing but either think about it or try not to think about it since the night I found out, and I just – can’t seem to get my head around it. I’m so angry and I feel so – ” He stops abruptly. 

“Betrayed?” I fill in quietly. 

“You could say that.” John scowls at the fire. “Everything I know about her, every _single_ fucking thing, is wrong. What am I supposed to do with that?”

I hesitate, the internal debate starting up again. “I don’t know,” I say slowly. 

John glares over me. “ _You_ want me to forgive her. What the hell was that about, Sherlock? Surely you can’t mean that. She shot you. In the chest. I saw the monitors – you flatlined. She killed you. I don’t know how you pulled yourself through that, but the fact is that she killed you. You have to know that.”

I debate further, silently wrestling with my own thoughts. “I do,” I concede. (Dangerous subject area.)

“Then what the hell were you on about?” John explodes. “It didn’t make sense and still doesn’t!”

“Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?” I ask, frowning at John. “You’ve had thirteen days now and this is the first time you’ve asked about that.”

“Maybe I was trying to figure it out on my own,” John retorts. “I don’t exactly like it when you leave me in the dark. I thought you would explain, once Mary wasn’t here.”

I consider the various options before I speak, then say cautiously, “John… I was trying to be tactful, believe it or not. I thought you would talk about it when you were ready to, and I didn’t want to push it.”

“Bugger that,” John says tersely. “We’re talking now. Tell me what the hell is going on. What were you playing at?”

I look at him for a long minute, still trying to decide how much he can handle knowing. “Look, John,” I begin. (This is difficult.) “If you want the bottom line, I was thinking of your safety. She’s an assassin. A very good one. And I do think that she was telling the absolute truth when she said that there is nothing she wouldn’t do to keep you.”

“Meaning what?” John’s eyes are fixed on me, rebellious and unhappy. 

“Meaning that she’s not… safe to stay with,” I say. This is the most awkward part, the crux of the matter. He could so easily turn on me if he thinks I’m actively trying to dissuade him from the marriage. “You’re right: she shot to kill. It’s entirely true that she could have aimed directly for my heart, or worse, my head, but there had to be room for ambiguity, for you to believe that she only meant to apprehend me.”

“She could have shot you in the shoulder or the knee,” John says. “I still don’t understand. Why make it such a close call?”

Feel my lip twist. “Because I suspect she very much did intend for me to die,” I say. 

John turns his face back to the fire, clouded and angry. “The problem is,” he says, “I’ve seen the shot. I can’t possibly argue with that conclusion. Which takes me back to the bit about what I’m supposed to do.”

“If you leave her, she will retaliate,” I say evenly. “I estimate that you have some time wherein she will wait and hope to see if you accept the reason I gave her as a way out. I had to arrange that you find out the way you did because I needed to be there, in case you rejected her on the spot and she decided to finish you off then and there.”

“But she loves me,” John says. “At least, I thought she did.”

This is a point upon which Mycroft and I cannot agree. I privately agree with John and can’t see a reason why not to say so now. “I think you may be correct,” I say carefully. “However, she is a narcissist, John. She cares only about what she wants. She wants you, and if you tell her that she cannot have you, I suspect that she will likely not take it well.”

John stares into the flames for a long time before responding. When he finally speaks, his voice is heavy. “I think I need a drink.”

“Agreed,” I say. I go to stand up but wince before I can help myself. 

John catches it and springs to his feet, his arm thrust out in my direction. “Stay put,” he orders. “What were you going to get?”

“Brandy,” I say around the pain gathered in my thoracic cavity. (Could very much do with a drink, myself.) “Shelf in the closet in the bedroom.”

“I’ll get it.” John disappears in the direction of my bedroom, passing through the kitchen to collect a pair of glasses on his way back. He pours two generous shots – double shots, really – and gives me one of them before sitting down again. 

We drink in relative silence, the fire crackling. Every so often, John gets up to put another log on. The brandy slowly eases the fire in my chest and loosens my muscles. John slouches down in his chair, evidently feeling its effects, too. He refills our glasses, two, maybe three times. (Have lost count.) Feel myself slowly become drunk. It’s rather pleasant. The room is warm and the silence is not uncomfortable. 

“I almost punched you when you said I brought that on myself,” John says, squinting into his glass a long while later. 

(Have lost track of my thoughts.) “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” He transfers the squint to me. It comes with a pointed finger, jabbing the air between us. “You said, more or less, that it was because I like dangerous people that all this happened.”

I frown. “No,” I say. (Thoughts a bit fuzzy.) “That’s not exactly what I said. Not what I meant, at least.”

“What did you mean, then?”

I open my mouth, then realise I was about to say much too much. Close it, reconsider. Mary was paid to get close to him. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe I can just say that. “It wasn’t your fault.”

His brows go up. “Was that just something you said to convince Mary, then?”

“Must have been,” I say. (Crisis averted.)

John presses the glass of brandy to his forehead. “Honestly, though, what have I done to deserve this?”

I hesitate. Can feel that the brandy is prompting me to talk too much. Should try harder to resist it, but… “If you want my opinion…” I trail off. (Drunk. Definitely a bit drunk.) “You don’t know what you want,” I say finally. (Is that what I meant to say? Consider. Yes. I think so.) 

John glares again. “Fuck you,” he says, without heat. “I think I know what I want by now.”

I drink some more of the brandy. (Possibly not a good idea.) “No,” I say decidedly. “You don’t. You – ” (No, stop, not good.) I retreat. “I think I’ve had too much to drink to talk about this right now.”

“No, say what you mean,” John says, scowling at me. 

I gesture vaguely with the glass, sloshing some of it onto my fingers. “You really _don’t_ know what you like. That’s always been ob – obvious.”

“You’re right,” John says. “I don’t want to have this conversation right now.” He downs the rest of his brandy. “I’m going to bed,” he says, just like that. He turns, but then looks back at me. “Need a hand getting up?” 

(Even angry, even abrupt, he’s still a caring person. John would never shoot me in the chest, I think vaguely.) “Maybe,” I concede, privately pleased by this. (Muscles feel like water.) 

John sets his empty glass down and comes over to haul me up by the rib cage, as gently as he can. “Whoa,” he says, as I teeter dangerously. “I shouldn’t have given you so much,” he mutters to himself, meaning the brandy. “It’s good for the pain, though, and better for you than morphine.”

“Speaking of which,” I slur, “is it time to have some more?”

“No,” John says firmly, steering me toward the bedroom. (Legs: not cooperating all that well.) “In the morning, if you need it.” (He says this grimly; we both know I’ll likely need something for the pain by the time I wake up. Seems he was right in that one does not simply recover from a bullet to the chest in a matter of days.) He gets me to the side of my bed, swaying a little himself. “I wouldn’t have drunk as much if I’d known how much help you were going to need,” he groans, hand going to his head as he straightens after depositing me. “Please tell me you don’t need help getting undressed.”

I make an indistinct sound. “I can just sleep in my clothes.” Eyes are closing, feel myself tilting backward so that I’m lying down, except for my feet, which are still on the floor. 

John sighs. “Oh, bloody hell,” he says. He kneels down (evidently) and starts untying my shoelaces. “You really are like a bloody child.”

Feel one of my hands make a vague gesture. “That’s what I mean,” I get out, eyes still closed. “You like it. You like taking care of me.”

His fingers still for a moment, but then he resumes what he was doing, getting my shoes off and peeling off my socks. He lifts my feet by the ankles and gets my legs onto the bed, then sits down on the edge beside me. “It’s possible you’re a little too right about that,” he admits quietly. “Sherlock.”

“Mmmm?”

“You might not remember this in the morning anyway, but I just wanted to say… I’m glad to have you around, now more than ever. I don’t know what I’d have done with myself if you hadn’t been here to stay with, to talk about it with…” John’s hand touches my right shoulder. 

I reach up and put my left hand on his wrist, trapping it there. “We’ve barely started talking.”

“But you’re here,” John says. “I’m glad. That’s all. Right now, I’m really, really glad that you’re not dead.”

Open my eyes and find his in the dark. They’re a little out of focus but very sincere. “I’ll try not to ever die again.”

John gives a surprised bark of laughter. “Don’t you dare,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Not bad. Drunk.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” John says dryly. “The brandy was probably good for you, though. Sleep it off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You’re not working?”

“It’s Saturday tomorrow,” John says, a smile in his voice. (I always used to lose track of what day it was, which he found endlessly exasperating. Amusing: he liked to think he found it exasperating, but he was always amused. Case in point. Must remember to use this as an example when he’s ready to hear that particular truth. Why does everyone fear the truth so much? Surely it’s better to _know_. Can never understand why anyone would choose to be willingly ignorant.)

“Is it?” I mumble, meaning Saturday. “Good.”

He gives a small, affectionate laugh and gets off the bed and doesn’t remind me that he hasn’t gone to work in over three weeks now. “Good night,” he says. 

“Night.” I’m falling asleep before he’s even closed the door. 

***

He’s in a better mood than he has been of late in the morning, but as the day wears on I can feel it darkening again. He’s had two text messages, both from Mary (or so I’ve deduced), and they’re what upset him again. He makes the thing I mentioned liking at the wedding for supper (deliberate reward for my behaviour in contrast to Mary’s? Possibly), the thing with the peas and chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes (no idea what he calls it; doesn’t matter) and now he’s doing the washing up. I half-heartedly offered to do this, but he said he’d rather do it himself. Possibly he wants the privacy. After awhile I finish my tea and struggle out of my chair to go turn the kettle on. 

As I do so, I notice that John’s hands have stopped moving in the water. I turn, concerned. His shoulders are hunched and his breath constricted. (Is he crying?) A moment or two later this is confirmed. He’s crying. (Am alarmed. Not sure how to respond.) I deliberate for a moment or two, then go over, standing behind him. “John.” He doesn’t respond. (Think, I tell myself. What is a best friend supposed to do? Strive on in manly ignorance and pretend it isn’t happening? It _is_ happening and he knows I know. What, then?) After a moment of awkward silence, I clumsily put my arms around his shoulders, then set my cheek against the top of his head. 

John goes still. Then takes a deep, uneven breath and says, “Sherlock. What are you doing?”

(This gives me pause. Not sure how this is unclear.) “Hugging?” I try, not moving. “Isn’t that rather obvious?”

John gives a watery laugh. “I suppose it is.” He doesn’t stiffen or shrug me off. After a minute or two, his breathing calms and his hands come up to hold my forearms, crossed over his chest. They’re warm and wet from the dishwater but it doesn’t matter. He is the perfect height for this. It feels strangely reciprocal, the comfort. (Am overwhelmed by the desire for him to turn around in my arms and hug back, but this is fine. It will suffice. He allowed me to hug him while he was crying. It’s a good beginning.)

He doesn’t tell me what Mary said in her texts and I don’t ask. 

***

It’s another two days before he brings the subject up again, Monday evening after we’ve eaten. He’d said he was too tired to cook when he came back from the clinic. I had already deduced this by his walk as I watched him approach from the window and thus had already called for Chinese. John brightened slightly when I said this and dinner was thereby a relaxed affair. John’s shoulders had already relaxed by several centimetres by the time the food arrived twenty minutes later. Knew it would be a difficult day for him, first day back at the clinic with Mary there. (Should I ask? Wait until he says something?) 

Decide to give it a probationary try. I set my plate on the coffee table and lean back into the sofa. It’s a very comfortable sofa. This is an uncomfortable topic. Juxtaposition. “So,” I begin. It already sounds stiff, rehearsed. “How was it, today?” (That’s sufficiently vague, isn’t it?)

John has already finished eating, holding his tea and picking a stray grain of rice off his jumper with a frown. (Messy eater, but it’s sort of endearing.) “Trying out the chatting thing again, are we?”

He’s defensive. Establishing distance with mockery. He’s not good, then. “Just thought I’d ask,” I say. Then add, not certain how he’ll take it, “I imagine it could have been a bit… difficult.”

“A bit!” John echoes. He gives a short laugh, entirely unamused. “Yeah, you could say that. Awkward when you’re not speaking to one of two nurses who works in the clinic. Who you happen to be married to.”

Ah. “Not talking at all, then?”

“Nope.” John looks over at my cup. “More tea?”

“Please.” I hold it out. 

“How are you doing, then?” he asks, filling my cup. “Pain any better?”

“Better,” I say. “You’ll be pleased to know that I conducted a very small – very clean – experiment in the kitchen today. No heavy lifting.”

John raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t see a giant mess.”

“I said it was clean.”

“What was it, then?”

“Skin cell samples. Yours and mine, if you want to know.”

“Wonderful,” John says, as though it pains him. “Why mine?”

“They were… on hand,” I say vaguely. 

“That,” John says, sounding amused now, “is disgusting.”

“I sanitised all of the surfaces afterward.”

He actually chuckles. “Amazing. After all this time, you’ve finally learned.”

I laugh, too. “I can be taught.”

“Listen, Sherlock… what you said the other night, about me not knowing what I want. Do you remember saying that? You were a bit drunk.” John is speaking to his tea, swirling it slightly in its cup. 

I watch him peripherally. “I remember,” I say cautiously. 

“What did you mean by that?”

There is approximately one foot of space between us on the sofa and suddenly it feels like a rather large barrier has been established. Must tread carefully here. “Do you really want to hear this?” I ask. “You’ve already had an unpleasant day…”

“You think it will be unpleasant to hear, then? What you’re going to say?” John glances in my direction, but not all the way, his gaze stopping around my knee and hovering there. 

“Possibly,” I say with a shrug. 

“Just give it to me. It’s just your opinion. I don’t have to agree with it, or like it.” He clears his throat, as though steeling himself. “Let’s have it, then. What is it that you think I want or don’t want?”

(How to begin?) I join him in looking at my left knee, our gazes mingling there on the fabric of my trousers. “We all live with fictions that we tell ourselves,” I say carefully. “I have to believe in my powers of deduction, in my own intelligence, or else my entire sense of identity is shattered. Mycroft has to believe that he’s always right, or his entire universe will come to a screaming halt. Your sister believes that she is a social drinker. It’s a fabrication she tells herself because it’s what she wants to believe about herself.”

“Right,” John says. (Can feel his head turn further toward me.) “So what about me? What do I believe about myself that isn’t true? I mean, you said some of it, the night I found out about Mary, but… tell me what you really think. All of it.”

“You’re sure you want to hear this?” I ask, to clarify. “Certain?”

“Just spit it out,” John says. 

I look at him plainly. “Well, John, it mostly comes down to your basic belief that you are an essentially quiet, decent, civilised person who is utterly normal and conforms to normal expectations, when the truth couldn’t be further off.”

He’s frowning but still at my knee. “Go on.”

“There have always been these indications – you met me looking for a flatshare, yet didn’t hesitate to get back into the closest thing you could find to a combat zone at the first available opportunity. You’ve always made noises about all of the mildly illegal things we’ve done, yet you’ve never protested. You say the things you think you’re expected to say, but you don’t actually believe in them, don’t actually feel that way. You feel the pressure to feel them, but it’s not real.” I look at him and his face is more troubled than ever. “All of those things I’ve asked you to do for me that no one else would have done. Retrieving things out of pockets of clothing I’m wearing at the time. You make all the ‘right’ objections, but you always do it anyway. One could argue that if you hadn’t wanted to do it, you wouldn’t have. I, of all people, certainly have cause to know how stubborn you can be. And I would say that the best possible example is your marriage, in fact. You thought that you wanted a normal, funny, loving woman who bakes bread and goes shopping with friends and has a flat in the suburbs, but one month of that life was already too much for you. You were irritable and restless and bored.”

“Okay,” John says, “let’s say that’s all true. Then tell me this, since you apparently understand me better than I understand myself – and that’s not sarcasm, by the way, Sherlock – I’m so confused these days I don’t even know _what_ to think about anything but you any more, and even that – ” He stops, then steers back toward the point at hand. “Tell me why I can’t live with this, then. Is it just because it was all a lie? Is my only problem the dishonesty? Is this not what I wanted all along, then? That’s what it sounded like you were saying that night, when you were trying to talk me around.”

(This is going to be the hard part.) I hesitate, ever so slightly, enough to really get his focus. “The problem,” I start, voice a little strained, “isn’t that it was a lie. It’s that you thought you wanted the lie. And now that you’ve seen it for what it is, you can’t deal with it because you think you prefer the lie to the truth, but the actual truth goes even further back. You didn’t even want the lie. That’s the first problem. You _didn’t_ want a meek little wife and a life in the suburbs. That’s what you believed you should want. And the problem with Mary isn’t only that she lied and you wish she’d done it better and never exposed the truth; the problem with Mary is that she’s been on the opposite side of the wars you’ve been fighting all your life.”

I stop speaking and wait for John to give some reaction to all of this. He swallows, swallows again, now looking at his own knees. He seems to be having trouble translating his thoughts into words. I wait, not prompting him. Finally he says, “Which wars?”

(Danger alert.) “John…” I begin, trying to find a way to warn him away from this line of inquiry, but he interrupts before I can. 

“You’ve read the memory stick. Haven’t you.” It’s not a question. 

“No.” I say swiftly, and honestly. But full disclosure is necessary at this point. “But Mycroft has a file…”

John nods, his mouth set, eyes a bit too hard. “And you’ve read that. Course you have. I should have known.”

“I was always going to tell you, when it seemed like the right time,” I say quietly. “John. Please believe me.”

He shakes his head, giving one of those flat, tight, unhappy smiles. “Yeah, all right. I suppose I do. I suppose someone has to know, right? When did Mycroft find out, then?”

I think back to all of the conversations Mycroft and I have had since the night I first met Mary. “He didn’t tell me anything in detail until after I was shot,” I say. “But he was researching from the first. Well: from when I first met Mary.”

“Why would he have done that?”

I swallow. “Because I asked him to.” I turn my face to look at him, but John is still staring resolutely at his knee. “The night I met Mary, I was frankly more concerned about you than I was about her, but I knew that she was a liar. That much I could see. There were too many conflicting points of information about her, too many closed doors in her eyes. I asked Mycroft to just have a quiet look. I didn’t want you – well.” I stop, realising what I was about to say was rather tactless, since in the end, John _did_ end up marrying an assassin. “I asked Mycroft to tell me if there was anything that you or I should know, you in particular. I was sure that there had to be something. I even called Mycroft from the wedding to see if he was sure he didn’t want to come by and do something about it, if there was something wrong. All he would ever tell me was not to get involved, though. He also wanted me to back off our friendship, establish more distance in the event that Mary was – what she is.”

John gives a quick, real smile at this. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says. “But why didn’t he say anything, then?”

“Apparently he didn’t want to do anything drastic. He was waiting to see if Mary was really going to leave her old life behind. If she had truly left it, it’s possible that it wasn’t as risky as Mycroft was fearing. But the night she shot me, he started making plans.” I’m still looking at John, waiting for him to look back at me. 

“Plans?” 

“I don’t know the details,” I say, which isn’t entirely true. I just don’t know all of them. “It would be better not to know, I think.”

John nods, accepting this, but his thoughts are clearly not really on that, anyway. “So,” he says. “Apparently you know very clearly what I don’t want – because I can’t really deny that you’re right about that one month. I always hear that people get – well – tired of being married after a couple of years, not within weeks of the ceremony. I was a bit disappointed in myself, but not as disappointed as I was itching to get out and do something. You’d disappeared, so there I was: just me and Mary, out in the sticks, and you’re right. I was bored to death and not particularly liking myself for it. So if that isn’t what I wanted, what did I want?”

He turns his head at last and looks at me, and I see something there that I haven’t seen since the night of his stag do, something I later told myself I must have imagined. There are lots of answers I could give now, containing varying fractions of the truth. (He’s not ready for the full truth, I think. Some things a person has to discover on his own. Though John has proven to be remarkably, deliberately obtuse on this particular matter.) Perhaps I should word it vaguely, then, and see what conclusions he draws. I met his eyes evenly. “Me,” I say, voice going slightly hoarse. “You want me. This life of ours. That’s what you want.”

John looks at me for a long time, eyes open and dark and deep as the sea. “Is it?” he says, his voice suddenly very quiet, just above a whisper. “That’s what I want?”

“Yes, John.” I’m barely breathing. (What will he say?)

He blinks several times, processing rapidly (or as rapidly as he can). “When you say that I want you… how do you mean, precisely?”

I do my very best to stifle every reaction to say something that starts with _John, please, I know you’re an idiot but I really thought that even you could have deduced this by now_ and try to find something more tactful to say. Impatience wins, however. “How do you think?” I ask crossly. “It’s obvious, John. It’s been obvious since the day we met.”

His mouth tightens. “And you? What about you? Is that supposed to be obvious, too?”

I feel my own lips tighten. (He’s going to continue being dense about it, then. Fine.) “Yes,” I say shortly. “You’d have to be a complete imbecile not to see it.”

John stares at me and then moves so swiftly that I flinch, thinking he’s about to hit me. When his mouth touches mine, it’s actually shocking. So much so that for the first second or two, before my brain galvanises itself into action, my body reacts on instinct alone, lacking instruction from on high. John is kissing me. In response to confirming that I have always wanted this life with him. I didn’t say forever, but I could have. And he is kissing me. I’m kissing back, and the sensation is nothing like kissing Janine was. Those were perfectly pleasant, harmless kisses, but this is fire in the pit of my abdomen, instant reaction in every pore of my skin, every nerve ending. Am suddenly aware of my own body in a way I have possibly never been before. It’s as intense as the agonising pain following Mary’s bullet, only it’s a vastly more pleasurable hunger, a driving need to be in direct contact with as much of John as I can possibly touch, a desire to have all of myself in contact with all of him, flesh to flesh, bone to bone, in him and part of him and all of the reverse, too. One kiss, and my head is in chaos. It’s a very good kiss, though. His mouth is very strong, knowledgeable, firmly in control from beginning to end. His lips silently command and mine obey unquestioning, opening to his, accepting his tongue into my mouth, my own cautiously touching back. His arms are around my shoulders and it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life and all I can think, beyond _yes_ and _please, never stop_ is why on earth we hadn’t ever reached this point in the days before I had to die and leave him behind. 

When John breaks the kiss, he stays close, a hand still on the back of my neck. I feel absolutely stunned, and more alive than I’ve ever felt before. I open my eyes. His are closed a moment longer, then open, blinking into mine. I don’t know what to say. (What does one say? Is there some traditional response of which I’m unaware?) “John.” His name says itself without my thinking. 

“I – ” He stops, then abruptly withdraws. “I’m sorry,” he says, a look akin to panic coming over his face. “I can’t – this isn’t – ” John is recoiling, on his feet in a nanosecond. His face is flushed. “I’m sorry, Sherlock,” he manages to say, hands balling into fists. “I can’t do this. Not now. Maybe not ever. I just – I’m sorry.” He hastily picks up both our plates and makes a beeline for the kitchen with them. He turns the water on too high and makes a show of clattering the plates with unnecessary noise. 

I feel as though he did punch me, only far worse. The effects of his sudden withdrawal are horribly similar to opiate withdrawal and I know for a fact that I will never be able to forget this or stop craving it. (That was cruel. Offering it and then snatching it away again.) Feel humiliatingly tempted to cry. I feel as though he has turned me completely inside out and exposed every bit of my soft underbelly, never to be hidden from him again. He has to know, from that kiss, how badly I’ve wanted this. The sheer measure of what he means to me. He must. I thought it was blindingly obvious _before_ , and still do. Now I might as well have had it projected onto every flat surface in the city of London, rented every advertising space to announce the enormity of my sentiments concerning him. It feels, in a word, awful. (The ghost of all of Mycroft’s dire warnings regarding sentiment and attachment flashes over my cerebral cortex and make an effort to ignore them. He’s never wrong, is he.)

I stay where I am on the sofa, dully listening to the sounds of John running the water and taking far too much time washing whatever few dishes there were. I washed them after breakfast and cleaned up the experiment; there can’t be all that many. He’s avoiding me. At last the water shuts off and he comes to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room, arms crossed defensively over his chest, one knee crossed in front of the other. Closed-off body language. “Sherlock,” he says, and his voice is still rough but a little softer than it was. “Listen. I’m sorry. I just – it’s just too much, right now. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just – I can’t deal with this right now, on top of everything else. You’re my best friend – at the very least – and you know how much you mean to me. Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen, okay?” 

His eyes are somehow worried and earnest and a touch angry all at the same time. (How does he do that? Convey three different emotions – and signals – at once, like that?) I’m slouched into the sofa, unhappy and uncomfortable, the bullet wound radiating heat and pain as though in direct reflection of his sudden rejection. Try to shrug. “I rather doubt that will be possible, but I suppose we’re both fairly good actors.”

“Sherlock.” He’s sharp now. “Don’t – be like that about it. Everything is fine. I just need to maintain status quo at least in this one thing, at least for right now. Can we do that? For my sake?”

I nod, not looking at him. “Sure,” I say. My voice sounds closed and flat. “Fine.”

He hesitates. “I’m, er, going to go upstairs for a bit. Are you, uh, all right? Pain-wise?”

“Fine,” I repeat, still not looking at him. 

He checks his watch. “You actually are due for a pill, if you want one.”

“Leave it on the table, if you would.” This is pushing it; he prefers to watch me take the morphine to be sure that I’ll actually take it and not hoard it or something. Idiot. If I wanted morphine (or anything else) that badly, finding it would be the easiest thing in the world. 

He doesn’t argue, though. “Sure,” he says, and takes a packet out of his pocket, ripping off the blister-pack square containing the single capsule. He crosses the room and puts it down on the coffee table in front of me. I meant the kitchen table but I suppose I didn’t specify. His eyes flick over me, guilty and confused. “Okay,” he says. “Er – see you later.”

I don’t say anything as he makes his escape. The shadows gather as night slowly falls and eventually I fall asleep on the sofa, leaving the morphine untouched on the coffee table. I wake sometime between three and four, my entire chest burning like fire. I’m gasping, hand clawing at the coffee table for it. 

John is there before I can find it (what is he doing down here? That makes no sense), pushing the pill out of its packaging, one thumb pushing my jaw down, placing the pill on my tongue with his finger. “Swallow,” he says. “I’ll get you some water.”

He’s gone before I can question it, the water running in the kitchen (didn’t this just happen? The pain is blurring the edges of reality; it’s too soon for it to be the morphine doing it). He’s back a moment later, holding a cold glass to my trembling lips. Put my hand over his wet one, steadying the glass. Some of the water slips down my chin. It doesn’t matter.

“You should have taken it earlier, you idiot,” John says, touching my forehead lightly. “You’re too warm.”

I let go of the glass (and his hand) and slump back again the back of the sofa. “What are you doing down here?” I finally ask as silence falls between us in the darkened room. 

John is still standing there, hovering anxiously over me. He doesn’t answer. “You fell asleep out here,” he says. “You should go to bed. You’ll sleep better there.” I let him pull me to my feet and guide me to the bedroom, his arm strong and sure around my back. In the bedroom he deposits me on the bed, pulling the sleeves of my robe off so that it won’t tangle around me as I sleep. Next he wrestles the blankets over me, then retreats to the doorway. He pauses there. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says, answering my question at last. “I… had a lot to think about. You weren’t wrong, you know,” he says after a bit. “About me. It’s… yeah. Anyway, good night.” Then he’s gone, the door closed behind him. 

***

He’s left for work by the time I wake the next morning. Mrs Hudson comes up to leave a cup of tea but I don’t want to talk to her so I feign sleep, the way I usually do. Check my phone. There’s a text from John. 

_Just wanted to say hi, and that_  
_as far as I’m concerned, everything_  
_is fine. We don’t have to talk about_  
_it. I’m picking up Indian on the way_  
_home, if that’s all right. See you later._  
_– J_

_J_. He never signs his texts. Perhaps that’s a habit he started with Mary and has got it mixed up. (Ugh.) Never mind that; I need to shower. I can feel it in my very intestines that Mycroft will descend today and want to talk about The Plan again. I’m correct, as usual. He arrives just after noon, armed with his briefcase and umbrella. I’m at the kitchen table when he arrives, starting on the second batch of skin cell samples. Mycroft sets his briefcase on the table and pulls out the opposite chair.

“How are you feeling?” he asks brusquely. 

Lift one shoulder. “Fine.”

“You’ve been shot,” he says, sounding annoyed. “You must be in pain.”

Glance up at him over the microscope. “I am, thank you, since John regulates my morphine intake with the same level of scrutiny you pay to foreign affairs. You should recruit him.”

Mycroft snorts. “No thank you, he’s all yours,” he says dryly. “Not that I would dare try to steal him from you. Between you and his wife, I don’t know which of you would kill me first. Speaking of which.” He opens the briefcase and pulls out a dossier. 

I can read the principal name upside down. “So you’re still going through with this?” I confirm. “Lazarus II, as you’ve labelled it?”

“It makes sense,” Mycroft says, brushing off my light sneer. “When Moriarty died, Mary, or whoever she was then, worked primarily for Moriarty, but she was still freelance and had a number of outside contracts as well.”

“I know,” I interrupt him. “You told me that. It was in the file.”

He holds up a hand to silence me. “I hadn’t finished. She completed a number of the outstanding contracts, collecting the fees and going about business as usual, but she left a few unfinished, primarily the assassination of John Watson. As you know.”

“Yes,” I say shortly. “I know that she was John’s killer the day of my so-called death.”

“More than that,” Mycroft informs me. “She was the assassin at the pool the day you first met Moriarty. The sniper. I have new reason to believe that this was the beginning of her obsessive fascination with John, and possibly when her desire to leave the world of killing behind began. However, she demonstrates clear signs of both narcissist and obsessive-compulsive behaviour, as we’ve discussed. Her mission was the hit on John should you fail to go through with your suicide, and if you happened to survive, she was to complete the contract. If she were to suddenly find out that Moriarty is alive and at large, there is no telling what she would do. You need to coach John through the timing of this. She needs to be absolutely desperate for his forgiveness by the time he finally gives it, to buy us a little more time. ‘Moriarty’ will attempt to contact her and re-hire her. She should turn it down, if John has taken her back, but Moriarty will attempt to hire her to kill Magnussen for a very large sum of money. The temptation will be to secure her future with John, though of course, this will merely set up another painful revelation down the road when he finds out. I will deal with Magnussen, per our plan.”

“When?” I ask. 

“Not yet,” Mycroft says. He checks his watch, as though it will inform him of the correct date for his planned raid on Appledore. “I’ll let you know. The time is not yet ripe.”

“Mycroft.” I stare at him over the microscope’s eyepiece, the interior light glinting into my eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“A legion of things, little brother,” he says airily. “I’m waiting until he’s certain that I have information he thinks he could find particularly useful. I’m dropping hints here and there for him to find.” With obnoxiously quick reflexes, his hand darts out and picks up a petri dish containing the first two slides from the experiment before I can stop him. He examines them, face twisting into a supercilious sneer. “Oh, _God_ ,” he says, his tone somewhere between contempt and ill-contained glee. “Don’t tell me, Sherlock. How ridiculously sentimental. Are you really comparing your skin cells with his?”

I swallow and force myself to keep calm. “It’s the only thing I have to study at the moment. They were available.”

Mycroft rolls his eyes. “Please,” he says. “You’re utterly transparent. You do realise what a wasted effort all this is, don’t you? What has he done since your return to merit this level of devotion, pray tell?”

I look back into the microscope and adjust the focus a little, looking at one of John’s cells. Pity it’s a dead cell. I should ask him for a live sample. I’d like to see what his personal process of mitosis looks like. I would watch it from prophase to telephase for hours, memorising him at a microbiological level. “He’s my best friend. Merit has nothing to do with it.”

“Very noble,” Mycroft remarks, and it’s not meant to be a compliment. (I don’t take it as one.) “He’s all but abandoned you, you realise. Found someone he thought more suitable, more woe to him. He’s never really appreciated you. He puts up with your oddities but doesn’t even understand your genius well enough to appreciate it. He calls you down in public. Embarrasses you. I’ve seen him do it, although usually my presence tends to bring out the opposite. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to go through this with him, if you’d rather not. Or, we can simply move the operation ahead and force Mary’s hand without any particular regard for John’s well-being.”

“Stop it,” I snap, suddenly vicious. “Just because you’ve never had a friend in your life is no reason to sabotage my friendship. Or my friend. You don’t know what he appreciates or doesn’t appreciate about me.”

“I know that it isn’t nearly enough,” Mycroft retorts. “You were doing so well until you met him.”

I raise my head, glaring at him. “You don’t know us,” I tell him fiercely. “And you certainly don’t know him.”

“I know that he doesn’t have a clue who he is,” Mycroft fires back. “It’s as though you went out of your way to choose the dullest knife in the drawer. All I’m saying is that I don’t want to see you hurt again.”

 _Again_ is another thinly-veiled reference to Redbeard, whose loss was the defining, devastating moment of my eight-year-old life. He’d been in the family since before I was born and was put down when Mycroft was home for the Easter holidays. Fifteen years old and the self-appointed king of the world even back then, Mycroft mocked me mercilessly for my inability to get through a single family meal without crying, unable to eat, sleep, or appear in public (or private, for that matter), without being reduced to a snivelling mess. I was eight, for God’s sake. It was sad. When he grew older, he tried to use it as a permanently recurring example of the dangers of personal attachment. I’ve never had another dog, too wary of the devastation of the loss even after all this time. But now I have John, and he’s right: it’s much worse. Damn Mycroft. Damn him to hell. I should sell him out after all. I look back at John’s skin cell. “And by well,” I say, “you mean alone, friendless, recently recovered from a somewhat regular cocaine habit, and generally – family excepted – unloved.”

I can feel Mycroft’s brows rise nearly to his receding hairline. “Love?” he repeats, picking out the singular syllable. “Is that the end game here, Sherlock?”

“It’s really none of your business. Is there anything else, or have you got a pressing engagement somewhere else?” Change the slides, replace it with one of my own cells. 

Can feel his eyes on me. “Sherlock… it’s touching that you’ve studied yourself, at least, well enough to have isolated what it is that you yourself want. However, you’ve always assumed a bit too much reciprocity on John’s behalf. He chose someone else, and as far as he’s concerned, once he gets over this ‘bump’ in his marriage, he’ll go back to it. I did warn you. People get married. I’m sorry you’ve set your sights on someone so unattainable, but you need to focus on the task at hand and not get sidetracked by your own, rather impossible desires.” Mycroft gets to his feet, replacing the dossier in his briefcase. “ _Try_ not to be too stupid about this,” he implores sardonically. “I need you at the top of your game for this. Once you’re healed, we’ll move things along.”

So that’s what he’s really waiting for. He needs to use me for this. “Bye,” I say tonelessly, and wait for him to leave. He sighs and does so, which is a massive relief. At least he spared me his rant about John hitting me this time. I could have told him that everyone hits me at some time or another; apparently I have that effect on people. I stopped taking it personally a long time ago. Molly hits me. Lestrade decked me once. John has hit me a number of times, it’s true, but he merely doesn’t know how to express himself verbally. I don’t mind. 

Suddenly the research loses its appeal. I realise I didn’t respond to John’s text. He’ll be waiting, probably a touch anxiously given the events of yesterday. I take out my phone and type a reply. 

_Indian would be great. You just_  
_missed a stultifying visit with my_  
_brother. Perhaps we should change_  
_the locks._

John responds sooner than I thought he would; he must be between patients. 

_As if that would help! Sounds like_  
_you’re having the same sort of day_  
_that I am. At least she’s leaving early,_  
_Karen said she’s got an ultrasound._  
_Shouldn’t I have known about that?_

Am surprised he’s so forthcoming in a text message. Perhaps that’s it: he does blog, after all. Not terribly well, but perhaps he finds it easier to express himself in writing. Or with a safe distance between himself and his confidante. Yes: that’s it. Should I tell him that she’s not pregnant? Deliberate. No. Not yet, at least. I write back. 

_I would say that you have the right_  
_to see the results, at any rate. When_  
_are you coming home?_

He texts back immediately. 

_Off at 4:30 but the last one might_  
_not show. See you in a few hours._

When he arrives later, there’s an odd sort of formality between us, though everything is deliberately very pleasant on the surface. John is a little bit too gentlemanly. (Wish he would just say something sarcastic or biting and act normally again rather than this slightly-forced joviality.) Nevertheless, we soldier on as though everything is fine, as though I don’t know half the things I know, as though I’m not plotting the demise of his horrible wife with my brother and half the secret service, as though neither of us is thinking about the kiss last night, or about what he said in the doorway of my bedroom. (Still cannot fully process what that _means_ ; did he mean to say that he knows and agrees with me that I’m what he wants and that it will therefore happen one day, or just that he knows that it’s true but still isn’t prepared to actually do anything about it? I wish he would just tell me.) 

I’ve lit the fire (Baker Street tends to get cold and it’s coming on November in a few days) and we eat in our chairs. A safe distance. He keeps his feet off my chair and I keep mine out of his space. He asks how I’m feeling and I tell him that it’s better. It’s true; today was a better day than the others have been so far. He smiles and goes to make tea, and somehow things are marginally all right. 

***

John comes home early one day just as Mycroft is leaving. They eye each other warily and neither one says much to the other save for a strained greeting in passing. Mycroft has tried again, though he knows how useless it is, to dissuade me from my friendship with John. John closes the door of the flat behind him. “Your brother again,” he says. 

“Unfortunately,” I agree. 

“Why was he here again?” John asks, with that tone that says he already suspects a certain answer. 

“Oh, you know,” I say vaguely. “He’s still on about Magnussen and all that.”

“And Mary,” John says, waiting for confirmation. 

I look up from my laptop, meet his eyes. “Yes.”

John nods and looks away. “Should I ask what his plans involve?”

“No,” I say. “Nothing is set yet. It will depend on certain factors that haven’t occurred yet.” It’s deliberately vague, but Mycroft could well be the force that pushes John back toward Mary. “It’s really more about Magnussen at this point,” I add, trying to distract him. 

I’m sitting at the desk. John comes over and sits down in the end seat, just beside my left wrist. He looks down at the surface of the desk. “I asked to see the ultrasound results, when I saw her at work today.”

I look at him. His face is tight, anger written into the creases in his forehead. “And?”

“She told me they’re not ready yet and walked out of the room.” John shakes his head. “It wouldn’t have taken more than forty-eight hours at the longest. Normally people get them more or less right away, but sometimes there are problems with printers and that. It makes me wonder…”

I can hear the doubt in his voice, catching my attention like a tiny hook. “What?” I ask and it comes out a bit sharp. “What do you wonder?”

John grips his palms together, twisting at his fingers. “She never had any morning sickness. Not once during the first trimester. There was a time when she was ill in the morning but everyone at the clinic had a twenty-four flu bug, me included. I wondered even then if it wasn’t just the flu. And she hasn’t really shown that many symptoms, other than the ones you first noticed. And those…”

He trails off again but I prompt him, almost wanting to be able to just tell him this. “Yes?”

His eyes meet mine and they’re very sober. “Tell me I’m thinking the wrong thing about this.”

(No escape here unless I lie to him. Would prefer not to do that. Enough people have lied to him of late.) “I don’t – ” I try, but he cuts me off. 

“Yes, you do. You always know what I’m thinking. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I look away, lips compressing a bit. “Say what you’re thinking.” (He has to be the one to put it into words.)

“That’s it’s fake,” John says, watching me like a hawk. “She’s faking it. Is she?”

I swallow, look back at him. I can’t bring myself to say it, but evidently the look is sufficient. John pushes his chair back so hard that it falls and he stalks into the kitchen, one hand on his hip, the other on his forehead. I don’t know what to say, what to do. He takes himself out of my line of sight, going to stand in the corner near the fridge. Hear it shift slightly as he leans back against it. Am very much uncertain of myself, but I get up and go to the doorway after a few minutes. John is leaning against the fridge with his eyes closed, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His face is so full of pain and crushing disappointment that it hurts me physically to look at him, the bullet wound reminding me sharply of its presence. “John,” I say, as I did before, the time he was standing at the sink. He opens his eyes but doesn’t say anything. I hesitate for a moment or two, then go over to him. I stop in front of him and just wait, not sure how much he would accept right now, but wanting, in my own, unpractised way, to do something for him if I can. 

He takes a step forward and moves into my space, arms still crossed, and I recognise it as the signal that it is and put my arms around him. It’s uncomfortable with his arms there, but after awhile he unlocks them and puts them around my back instead. We stand there that way for a very long time, neither of us saying anything. Finally, what feels like hours later, he says, “Order us some dinner, would you?”

“Of course,” I say, my voice lower than it should be and rather tender even to my own ears. “Anything.”

***

It’s a few days later when John gets the brandy out again and brings it over to the fire. I’m sitting in my chair with my laptop, reading a rather dull article on recent advances in cadaver preservation when I vaguely register the sound of liqueur being poured. (The high sugar content makes the sound different from that of water being poured; I once wrote a blog entry about that. It’s a pleasing sound.) The clink of a heavy glass being set on the table at my elbow pierces my thoughts and stirs me fully into the present. I look at it. “What’s this?”

John retreats toward his own chair. “Brandy,” he says, as though I don’t know. “I could use a drink and could do with the company. Drinking alone is pathetic.”

There’s a brief silence wherein we both think of Harry. Opting for tact, I don’t mention her. “All right,” I say, docile for once. I pick it up and sip. It’s pleasant, the sweetness contrasting with the fire that glows on its way down, pooling in my belly. The fire is lit and the brandy feels like an inner reflection of the low flames bobbing in the fireplace. 

“How are you feeling?” John asks. When I look at him, he clarifies. “The wound.”

It’s a bit hasty, as though he was worried I thought he was asking about my emotional state. And wouldn’t _that_ be an awkward conversation. _So, about that time when I kissed you. Any residual feelings there? Desire? Rejection? How’s that sitting, then?_ And my hypothetical, potential answers are even worse. _It feels terrible, frankly. Yes to all of the above. Desire. Pain. Kiss me again. Please._ I look into my glass and attempt to regulate my face before it can betray what I’m thinking. “Good,” I say neutrally. “Better.”

“Are you in pain?” John’s voice is so gentle, too gentle if he’s trying to avoid the other topic, the forbidden one. 

Shake my head. “No. The dosage is just adequate.” He’s cut it back again, just half a pill and only in the morning. 

“Good.” He sounds satisfied. “What are you reading?”

I contemplate for a moment, eyes on the laptop screen, and pick out a line to read to him. “ _A small incision is made on the superior border of the sterno-clavicular notch. The common carotid artery is exposed by cleaning the fascia of the artery to allow movement and space for the cannula which is inserted into it. When the carotid artery is raised with aneurism hooks, two ten-inch pieces of ligature are placed around the artery with forceps to hold the u-shaped cannulas in place during embalming. This is done to help avoid leakage or release of the tube due to pressure exerted by the embalming apparatus. The common carotid artery is incised about 4 mm long and any blood clots present are removed with forceps._.”

John makes a pained sound. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“It’s terribly dull,” I say, closing the laptop. I set it on the floor. He seems to want to converse, so I decide to check in regarding the operation. Mycroft has been harassing me to get an update, anyway. “So,” I begin. It’s difficult to bring this up without it sounding like I have ulterior motives of my own. I sound a bit stiff. “What are you thinking these days, regarding Mary?”

John blinks as though startled that I’ve mentioned it. I suppose we haven’t talked about any of this since the night he kissed me, five days ago. (As if I could lose track of that.) “Nothing new. I haven’t told her that I’ve guessed about the pregnancy.”

I watch him carefully. “How… are you feeling about that?” It’s quiet; I know the question is intrusive. 

John glances at me, then looks away. “You know how I feel about everything,” he says to a point on the floor in front of the fireplace. “You tell me.”

(Does this mean he doesn’t know?) This is too dangerous to risk a wrong deduction on. Children are not my area. (Didn’t think they were John’s either, but he seemed pleased enough when I told them Mary was expecting. Or so I’d thought.) “I don’t want to presume,” I say. He doesn’t answer, so I prod a bit. “Are you all right?”

He gives a bitter laugh, shrugging at the same time. “I don’t know, Sherlock. I really don’t know. When you told me at the wedding, I was more shocked than anything, but you’re supposed to be pleased, right? But then during that first month after the wedding, I just… kept thinking how much more having a kid would limit my availability to you, to our work, how much more Mary could use it as an excuse to keep me at home. But now I feel almost as though I wished the kid out of existence, which makes me feel terrible.”

“The baby never existed if the pregnancy isn’t real,” I remind him. “John. This isn’t your fault.”

“I know,” he says, but he’s still troubled. “I just – I guess I’m both genuinely disappointed, and also frustrated that I’m not more disappointed, though it certainly makes everything clearer in my head about Mary.”

“And what are you thinking about that?” I ask, holding my breath. 

He looks over at me, not turning his head, giving me one of those side-eye _you know the answer to that question already, don’t you_ looks that he does so well. “What do you think?” 

He says it as though the answer is clear, but it isn’t. Not to me. “I don’t know,” I say, frowning at him. “Hence my asking.”

John gives a frustrated gesture with both arms. “Well, what, do you think I’m going to take her back? She _shot_ you, in case you hadn’t noticed. She killed you. She meant to. And then she threatened you, and was prepared to shoot you again.”

“True,” I say. “But…”

John looks at me for a long time, as though debating whether or not he wants to say something in particular. Finally he says, “Listen, Sherlock. I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing right now. But I think it’s got to be clear to you by now that I’m… yeah, a little mixed up at the moment. I know it’s not your fault that I somehow married an assassin, but I can’t help feeling like screaming at absolutely everyone these days. Sometimes I feel like you should have told me, or Mycroft or Mary or _someone_ should have, but I know it’s my own fault. It was my responsibility, not yours. But then there’s also – ” he waves vaguely between the two of us. “This. Whatever’s going on there. I don’t really know how I feel about any of that, but I can’t really deny to myself that it’s there, that you’re right about me. I suppose that in my worst moods I wonder why you didn’t say something before I got married. There were certainly opportunities. And I know that half of that responsibility is mine, too, but – were you really just going to let me go live in the suburbs with a psychopath and let me slip out of your life? That’s one of the things that bothers me the most. Because I never stop thinking about this. You. Us. I can’t. I lie awake thinking about it and wondering if it meant so little to you that you would have just let it go, the way you let us go all through August.”

I’m startled by the intensity of his words. “I thought that was how it worked,” I say, before I can choose an adequate filter. “I thought you were supposed to let people go.”

“You thought that was how what worked?” John’s eyes are on mine, wide and rather intense in the firelight. 

(Implement strategic retreat.) “You know,” I say, shrugging. I remember the brandy and drink the rest of it all at once, stalling for time. Set the glass back on the table and turn the tables on him. “I could ask you the same thing. Why you let it go a whole month, too. Why was it only my responsibility to say something, especially if you’d made it clear that you’d chosen someone else? You’d just got married, for God’s sake.”

Didn’t want to argue, but it seems we’re arguing. John raises his voice. “I’m not the one who’d already figured it out,” he says, loudly. Aggressive. “You could have given me a hint.”

“There _were_ hints,” I insist. (Want to go over there and give him a “hint”. Actually: perhaps that’s not a bad idea. Will he reject it again, though? It sounds like he’s rather arguing for it. And if he’s still certain that he won’t go back to Mary…) No, not that: a gambit. A tease. I get up and bend over him as though I’m going to kiss him, but stop two inches from his mouth, let my voice drop an octave. “How is this for a hint? If I’d just done this, put myself directly in front of you, what would you have done? Hmm? You’re saying you wouldn’t have retreated behind a repressed, semi-delusional bluster of denial?” With that, I disappear from his space and am back in my chair again not two seconds later, satisfied by the darkness flooding John’s irises, his immediately heightened rate of breath. 

The interest that was all over his face dissolves into immediate anger, as I knew it would. “ _That_ ,” he says angrily, “is _not_ fair, Sherlock. Don’t play games with me like that.”

Lift my brows with something like disdain. “Oh, and kissing me breathless out of the blue and then immediately rejecting it was fair?” (I sound like a petulant child. Am revealing too much. Alarms going off. Retreat. Retreat now!)

John glares at me. “Right, then,” he says. He pushes himself up and mirrors what I just did, bending down over me, supporting his weight on the arms of my chair. He’s in my face, confrontational, swiftly lowering his mouth to mine (should probably try to resist this but know already how well that would work). I tilt my chin up though my mouth is set rebelliously, and John kisses me with force. (I should resist it out of spite but I can’t. Am slightly chagrined by how quickly I respond despite myself, mouth opening to his not two seconds after it begins, tongue clashing against his hotly, forcefully. After about a minute, I can already feel myself responding physically. I seize John by the hips and pull him down and his arms give way. He collapses ungracefully into my lap but doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. (Am straining upward for more contact, which should be embarrassing, but the urgency is rapidly drowning everything else out.) John is straddling my thighs, pushing himself against me, and our limbs are fighting against each other’s in the mutual need for proximity. As we kiss, we’re rutting at each other and I can feel my normally-quiescent genitalia stiffening with arousal, with the most basic, primal desire for stimulus, for friction. (For _John_.) Can feel him against me, hard in his trousers, fighting to rub himself against me. We’re really doing this, grinding against each other like teenagers, panting into each other’s mouths. We’ve managed to find a way to get enough contact and friction for the frantic activity to begin to pay off; it’s starting to feel rather intensely good. (Want to touch him, his bare skin, but that might scare him off, be too much, and besides which, I cannot bring myself to do anything to interrupt the building rhythm between us.) Can hear myself making sounds I haven’t heard myself make before in my life. John is breathing curses into my mouth, against my neck, and somehow he’s worked his hands up the back of my neck into my hair and down the back of my trousers respectively. Mine seem to have found their way to his arse and are gripping it so tightly it must be painful, but he’s not complaining. Hard and fast and fierce seems to be the mandate here. The pleasure is mounting and John is groaning in my ear. “Fuck, Sherlock, I’m going to come – I’m going to come in my pants – ” A sharp jerk goes through his body and I can feel it through both our trousers, feel that he’s doing exactly that, having an orgasm against my body. I open my mouth to try to find some way of responding but before I can, my own orgasm overtakes me, pushed over the edge by his. An animalistic sound tears itself from my throat, making me sound utterly primitive as semen bursts out of my body against the spasms of John’s, coating my undergarments with hot, liquid release, and I’m powerless to stop it, the flood of pleasure so intense that I can’t breathe as it lasts, mouth open, face contracted in something near agony as the orgasm plays itself out. Finally I exhale, gasping, and John’s mouth is on my neck again, wet and loose now, fingers pushing into my hair. 

I’m breathless, dazed, slightly euphoric. (This really just happened. Have no idea what it means, what he could possibly be thinking. Not knowing makes me edgy.) When I can speak again, I say, “And what was _that_ supposed to prove?”

“Shut up,” John commands, and puts his mouth back on mine. I take it hungrily, giving myself over to the feel of his lips and tongue against mine, the intimacy of his breath. It’s better than morphine. It’s better than cocaine. It’s better than anything. I want him more than anything. (Stab of desperation.) After, “Just shut up,” he repeats, closing his eyes and turning his cheek into mine. His arms are around my shoulders and we’re halfway out of the chair but it doesn’t matter. We stay that way until both our chests have stopped heaving. After awhile, John shifts. “I need a shower,” he says. 

(That’s it? He’s just going to leave it like that? No verbal conclusions? No recriminations? He’s retreating again. Damn it.) I watch him go, his hand reaching up to rub through his own hair before disappearing into the bathroom. I need to shower, too, but obviously that will have to wait. I pull myself slowly back into a sitting position in the chair and think that I will never view my chair the same way again. After a bit, I realise that it would be better not to have the awkward encounter/non-conversation that will surely occur when he passes back through the sitting room on his way upstairs, so I shut myself in my room to wait until he’s gone. 

The bullet wound is aching. Probably shouldn’t have exerted myself so much, but what can one do. Between his wife shooting me almost literally in the heart and whatever it is he’s doing to me, the Watsons will be the death of me at this rate. 

***

I wake up sufficiently early to make sure that I see John before he leaves for the clinic. Somehow I feel that if I don’t see him until the evening, it will be too easy to deny that it happened at all. It will almost certainly be awkward but just establishing contact is important, I think vaguely. When I hear him in the kitchen, I exit the bedroom in pyjama pants and the maroon dressing gown. (Have deduced that John likes that one the best.) No t-shirt but I have the gown tied loosely. (Don’t want to be too obvious.) 

John is standing at the coffee maker, which he moved back to its original location the first morning he woke up here again, and glances back over his shoulder. “Morning,” he says, too quickly, looking away before his eyes have quite reached me. 

“Morning,” I say, endeavouring to sound casual. “I thought it was Saturday.”

He gives an almost inaudible laugh, just a puff of breath through his nose. “It’s Friday.” (That’s better. Sounds more like him.)

“Oh.” I sit down in one of the chairs. 

He sends another quick, slightly-nervous look in my direction, eyes actually landing on me this time. “You’re up early.”

Shrug. “I woke up.”

“Tea or coffee?” John asks. 

“If you’re making coffee, coffee.” I say, attempting to be pleasant. (This is painfully awkward.)

John stays by the coffee maker as though it’s his assigned territory for the morning, waiting for the percolation cycle to finish. I pretend to look at the _Times_ just to let him think I haven’t noticed. When the coffee has finished dripping, John pours two cups and brings them to the table, goes to the fridge to get the milk, then sits down across from me. He clears his throat. “Er, it’s way too early to be talking about this, but… sorry I left last night. Again. So soon after, I mean. I just, uh, I don’t know. Needed to be by myself for a bit.”

His eyes meet mine and after a moment, I shrug. “It’s fine.” (More than fine, actually; am relieved to hear him say this.)

He looks as relieved as I feel. “Is it?” He looks down. “Sherlock… I don’t know what I’m doing, I really don’t. But I’m not sorry it happened. In a lot of ways I feel like it was always going to come to this, with us. You’re right: I just didn’t let myself think about it, but it was still there, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say, watching his face carefully. “It was always there.”

John takes a sip of his coffee, his small mouth pursing to blow on it first. Think of his mouth on my neck, on my lips last night, feel myself flushing and clear my throat, blinking rapidly and trying to steer my thoughts elsewhere. John’s eyes flick over my face, taking everything in. “Let’s just… see how it goes,” he says, tremendously unspecific. (Probably intentionally so.)

I stir sugar into my coffee and take a sip, laying the spoon on the table. “It’s infidelity, you realise.”

John scowls. “She _shot_ you. That cancels out any vows she ever made to me, in my opinion. I don’t even know who it is that I’m married to.”

“You could just read the memory stick,” I point out, dropping the subject of infidelity. 

He shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“But you will?” I press. When he doesn’t answer, I push a little. “John. You need to read it before Mycroft puts his plan into action. You need to know. I know it’s hard, but surely an ugly truth is better than a lie?”

John sighs. “Possibly,” he says. He looks at me. “Would you read it with me, if I did?”

Am surprised by this. “Of course,” I say, frowning. “I thought you would want to do that on your own, in case it’s… I don’t know.”

“Maybe,” John says. “Maybe I’m just being a coward about it.”

“Don’t say that,” I say firmly. “You’re the bravest man I know.”

This actually makes him smile. He drinks most of the rest of his coffee (he always likes to leave about an inch of it in his cup for some reason I’ve never been able to deduce) and gets up. “I’m off,” he says. “See you in time for dinner.”

“All right.” He goes to the door, putting his coat and shoes on, then opens the door. (Sudden impulse.) “John!”

He stops, hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”

I go over and push him up against the open doorframe by his good shoulder, bend my head and kiss him rather thoroughly. He tastes like coffee and himself and it’s perfect; he’s responding enthusiastically, his hands coming up to rest on my waist, his mouth closing over my lower lip and sucking. (Desire making itself known again, bullet wound giving a reminder throb. Have forgotten to take the half dosage. Don’t care.) Eventually he pulls back and says, a bit breathlessly, “I’m going to miss my bus.”

I step back and let him go. I’ve had so much practise letting John Watson go now. It both does and doesn’t get easier. “Go,” I say, my voice rough. 

He smiles at me, takes a step and kisses me once more, quickly, then turns and jogs down the stairs. 

I retreat to the sofa to wilt like a Victorian heroine, smiling foolishly to myself, and spend the morning committing every single detail of last night and this morning to its own room of my mind palace. (Who am I trying to fool? He _is_ my mind palace; every room is built of him. He is the foundation and the ceiling, the structural supports, the walls, the light coming in through the windows, illuminating everything. He is every part that matters.)

***

Lestrade is over when John gets home from work. He has been lecturing me again about keeping him in the dark and simultaneously asking for advice on a case. John has said it’s too soon to start working again and while I would normally ignore him if a particularly interesting case came along, I’m rather endeavouring to keep him happy with me these days. I received the brunt of Lestrade’s frustration during my second stay in the hospital, his rants about John and I not having told him where I’d gone or what that was all about. I feel genuinely a bit badly now that I can’t tell him anything about it, especially when he so wants to know, but he can’t know yet. The case was simple enough; I’ve told him what to look for. He frowns when the downstairs door opens, John’s step on the stairs. 

“Who’s that?” he wants to know, as it’s clearly not Mrs Hudson. He’ll have forgotten this already but I did mention that she was in Dorset for a funeral. 

Before I can tell him, John calls up. “Sherlock?”

“In the kitchen!” I call back. 

“What, have you been there all day – ” John gets to the doorway and stops, seeing Lestrade. “Oh! Greg. Hello.” His eyes shift to me as though guilty. (Is he worried I’ve been indiscreet? He should know better than _that_.)

“John!” Lestrade says, sounding surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, nothing,” John says. (He’s a terrible liar. Always has been.) “Just, er, getting dinner with Sherlock.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows lift sceptically. “On a Friday night? The wife let you out, did she?”

John blinks twice in a row, always a sign of internal agitation. “Yep.” It’s very short. 

Lestrade nods, mouth open slightly, deducing possibly more than John would prefer. “I see,” he says. “That how it is, eh? Well, I’ve always said: marriage is hard. Good you two are keeping up, anyway.”

“Yeah.” John gives him a quick, tight smile without much real warmth to it. “What are you up to tonight?”

Lestrade spreads his hands. “Working. The usual. Speaking of which, Sherlock’s just given me a lead to check, so I’ll be going. Stay in touch, will you?”

“Of course,” John says automatically. 

“I mean it,” Lestrade says sternly. “Seriously, you two, quit leaving me out of the loop.”

“Yeah, sorry,” John says, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “Look, let’s get a pint sometime, then. When you’re not busy.”

Lestrade gives a dry laugh. “When would _that_ be? Text me sometime. I’m off. Thanks, Sherlock.”

“Of course.” I smile and he goes. 

John waits until the door closes, then gives me a half-smile. “That was interesting,” he comments. 

“Indeed,” I say. “Dinner?”

“Sure.”

“Shall I cook, or do you want to go out?”

John smiles at me, a real smile this time. “Let’s go out,” he says. We do, trying a new Turkish restaurant that has opened next to the Chinese on the corner, and it feels like the first time at Angelo’s all over again. Only now there’s an assassin and his marriage between us instead of only my insistence that there was space only for work in my life. I didn’t know then that I wanted this. I’ve known now since before I saw him again at the restaurant with Mary, and every passing day since that night has only confirmed it. Planning their wedding was the only way to get through that; I assumed that once it was over, some part of my brain would have accepted that that possibility was truly over, accept that his marriage was reality. He was right when he said that there had been countless opportunities, but what could I have done? He was engaged. He’d made his choice clear. But I thought I saw it sometimes, just behind his eyes. It was blatant the night of the stag do, but I didn’t know what to do with it, couldn’t gauge how he would respond. Didn’t want to damage our friendship permanently, so in the end I did nothing. 

Dinner is lovely, despite all of the things we’re not exactly saying. It feels like a date. The food is very good, but I’m more interested in what’s playing behind John’s eyes now, privately glad that we went somewhere so close to home if his look means what I suspect it might. 

It does. Back in the flat, John stops just inside the door downstairs and turns to me, his eyes question marks in the dimness of the entrance way. It’s as though he’s spent every second of dinner waiting until we were in private, wanting to kiss me, and now he does. In the end we don’t even make it upstairs. The kiss in the darkened hallway turns heated and it’s John who starts touching first, his hands all over my body, slipping the buttons of my shirt out of their holes to rub my chest, careful to avoid the wound, unfastening my trousers and reaching back first to grope at my arse as I exhale hard, his mouth on my throat. I thrust a thigh between his legs and he pushes against it, conspicuously hard already. He’s more focused on me, though, shoving a hand down the front of my trousers and beginning to stroke roughly, his tongue strong on my throat, on my mouth. His small, perfect hand forms a tight circle around me as I harden, fingers rubbing over my testicles, that place just behind them which I have, in an astonishing gap of knowledge, somehow neglected all my adult life. Can feel the colour rising to my cheeks as the flow of oxygen to my brain is impeded; I’m holding my breath, trying not to make too much sound (undignified). Can’t move to reciprocate; am helpless to the onslaught of John’s determined fingers, my own gripping the sleeves of his jacket in a stranglehold as the sensation rises, choking me. “John – ” It sounds nervous, almost panicked; the orgasm is forming, preparing to spike, and then before I can help it, it does. I come all over John’s hand and forearm, body caught in a head-to-toe shudder as I ejaculate helplessly, teeth digging into my lower lip. I’m still not entirely quiet – it’s a good thing Mrs Hudson is in Dorset; the cause of this tight, gasping sound that comes out despite myself through my nose, is entirely obvious.

The orgasm subsides, my muscles releasing. I’m panting and John is kissing me anyway, but not so tightly that I can’t breathe. “Upstairs,” he gets out, between. 

We move toward the stairs, trying not to lose proximity. I’m behind him and on the bottom stair I reach around to grasp at him and his knees nearly buckle, which produces some filthy language on his part. We make it nearly to the landing before he turns around and attacks my mouth again. We end up sitting on the stairs, John several steps above me, and I’m unbuttoning his jeans as though I have the first clue what I’m doing. It doesn’t seem to matter. Instinct alone may suffice for this, I think. When I’ve got his clothing out of the way, I push his knees apart and insert myself between them, examining his penis at close range for the first time. It should just look like a penis, but my firsthand experience with the anatomy has been sadly limited to corpses. Wasn’t expecting it to be as fascinating as it is. The sight of it is highly enticing. It’s John, and it’s tangible proof that he desires me. (What more could I ask?) I put my mouth on it, relishing the way the smooth head feels on my tongue, careful to keep my teeth (mostly) out of the way. It fits perfectly; it could have been designed with my mouth in mind, I think hazily, turning my full attentions to the task. John is moaning freely, making no attempt to censor himself, but given that he is vastly more experienced in this area than I am, presumably he’s generally a lot more comfortable with it all. He’s leaning back, propping himself up with his elbows on the stair above, pushing very slightly into my mouth. I’m gripping his thigh with my left hand and exploring the soft oddness of his testicles with my right, prodding and tugging and my mouth works over as much of the length of his erection as I can manage. John’s moans are rising in pitch, beginning to sound a bit desperate, so I increase the speed, press harder with my tongue and then he’s saying my name, a note of sharp warning there (which I ignore) and then his arse lifts off the stairs as he thrusts hard into my mouth, lingering there for a long moment as he comes, liquid pulsing against my soft palate and sliding down my throat. I swallow, hoping I won’t choke, swallow again, receiving it. Receiving John. I’ve imbibed his very DNA now, spirals of his genetic cartography mingling with my own in my saliva. (Has Mary done this? Consumed John this way? Jealousy makes itself known again, rather forcefully.) 

When I raise my head, I see that John’s is tipped back on the upper stair, his chest heaving, body utterly slack. “My _God_ ,” he pants. “Sherlock, that was the best thing – the very best thing – that I have ever experienced – in my life.”

Stroke his thighs with my thumbs. “Good,” I say, trying not to sound too pleased. Then, in an attempt at humour, I quip, “Tea?”

John lifts his head. “Tea,” he agrees. “And let’s talk.”

I try to quell the frisson of negative anticipation that stiffens my spine at this. Talking is better than not-talking, surely. If he’s ready to talk about it, that should mean that he’s found his way out of his panic about this. And given what he just said about my first and surely, therefore, worst attempt at fellatio, it doesn’t seem likely that he’s about to explain nicely why this can’t continue. (I hope.) I follow him up the rest of the stairs and wait as he sets about making tea. I go to the cupboard and get out two clean cups, take them over to John. 

He smiles, affectionate. “Ta.” The kettle boils and he pours water over the loose tea leaves in the teapot, the pungent spice of bergamot curling into the air. I love Earl Grey and he knows it. He carries the pot and the cups over to the coffee table and sits down on the sofa, in the middle so that I’ll be close no matter which side of him I choose. “So,” he starts, as I’m not speaking, obviously waiting for him, “I know I’ve been giving some pretty mixed messages lately, but I had about an hour between patients this afternoon and I went for a walk and had a bit of a think. I haven’t really made any permanent decisions, but I thought it was only fair to talk about it with you, tell you what sort of thing I’m thinking and all that.”

John stops and waits for me to respond, so I say, cautiously, “Okay.” I wait. 

He leans over and pours the tea. “I forgot the milk. Bugger. And the sugar. Be right back.”

 _Sod the milk and sugar_ , I think with irritation, but he’s already halfway to the kitchen. He comes back, adds sugar and milk to my cup and milk to his, and says, “So the thing is, it’s just a lot to think about at once, and I just need to be careful that I’m not superimposing one decision over another.”

“Meaning?” I pick up my tea and sip it, though it’s too hot. 

“I have two decisions to make,” John says. “First, I have to decide what to do about Mary. Second, and hopefully not directly related, there’s you. I am – and have been – about ninety-nine percent, if not one hundred percent sure since the night Mary shot you that I absolutely cannot forgive her, cannot see any future for our marriage, don’t feel the way I used to feel for her, all of that. But what I need to make clear to myself is that _that_ is the reason, and that alone, that our marriage can’t continue. For – I don’t know, my personal sense of integrity or something, it can’t be that I’m leaving her for you. And I’m not. And we don’t even know what this is yet, which is why I’m trying to keep that to its own category and I’ll come to that in a minute.”

“All right,” I say, still guarded. “And what have you concluded, concerning Mary?”

John shakes his head. “She killed you,” he says simply. “That’s really all I need to know. She shot you and killed you and it was intentional and she would have done it again in a heartbeat if she thought it would allow her to keep me. That’s not how love works. That’s not what it is. You don’t do things to keep people. You practically said it the other night, yourself, that if you love someone, you let them go.” His eyes flick up to mine. “The way you let me go,” he adds quietly. “This isn’t about choosing one person over another, but that’s a pretty sharp contrast right there. It really _isn’t_ about choosing someone else other than Mary, though: this is about not choosing Mary, full stop. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I say, and it does. “Go on. What else?”

“I can’t do it,” John says. “I can pretend, if you need me to, though there are limits to how far that can go. But it’s finished, for me. I don’t even know who she is. She’s not the person I thought I married. And if she had been, then this,” he says, indicating me, “would be a serious problem for me about now. Because I can’t deny that I’ve always felt something, Sherlock. I know that. I know I’ve always denied it before, always ignored it, tried to tell myself it wasn’t what it was, but it _is_. I know that, or I do now, at least. It was always there, like you said. So I decided in the park earlier to just let it go tonight, let it happen and see how I felt, and…”

I watch him, barely breathing. “And?” I demand.

John leans over and kisses me and it’s too gentle; it’s devastating in its simplicity and if it goes on for longer than about five seconds I will dissolve before his very eyes. Mercifully he releases me before that can happen, sparing my dignity. His eyes, though. (Can hardly bring myself to look at them without needing to close mine, but am also incapable of looking away: impasse.) His eyebrows form parentheses of undisguised emotion, plain to see. “I’m sure of you,” he says. “I used to wonder if you even had human feelings like the rest of us, but I absolutely know that you do. It’s me I’m not sure of. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to start something new just while something else is ending, especially if that part needs to be kept a strict secret for the time being. I’m not sure I could hide this. It will be hard enough acting like I’m still in love with Mary, never mind also pretending that there’s nothing going on with you. I don’t really know how it would work between us, but I’m not opposed to it. I’m just not sure if now is the best time.”

It’s all horridly understandable. “Are you concerned about the infidelity after all, then?” I ask, curious. 

His lip twists. “That’s the other irony, isn’t it. I know this sounds like pure justification, but in a sense, if we say that this was always here between us, just never acted upon, then in a sense, wasn’t my relationship with Mary an act of infidelity on my part in the first place?”

(Could point out that, as he said, this is rationalisation at its finest. He is legally married to Mary Morstan, not me. We never had that sort of relationship, no matter how implied or secretly desired it might have been.) I don’t say this. Instead, I look into his expressive eyes, deep blue in the lamplight, and my voice rasps a little. “I love you.” (There: it’s said, stark and unadorned and naked and true. I’ve just given him the keys to the control room.)

“I know,” John says, terribly gentle. He smiles, though it’s tinged with pity – not pity, but compassion – and touches his lips to mine very briefly, not even giving me a chance to respond, kiss back. “Can you wait, though? I just need to get the rest of my life sorted first. If we do this, and I hope we do, I want to do it properly. I don’t want it tangled up in the rest of it. Mary. Magnussen. Whatever Mycroft is planning.”

I worry at my bottom lip with my teeth, still swollen from where I bit it too hard in the entrance way. “When you say wait, do you mean that everything will revert to what it was? Just two men sharing a flat, or at least, one staying over while his marriage breaks up, eating toast and watching telly and just pretending nothing is there?” Can hear the unconcealed doubt and extreme reluctance in my voice. 

John sighs. “It sounds a bit improbable when you put it that way. I’m not sure if I could do that, either. What about this, then: we do our best to keep things more or less platonic, but if something happens, it’s not the end of the world. Could we try for that? Otherwise, I’ll be sleeping in your room every night and wearing your pants by accident and it will be just far too hard to pretend to anyone that we’re not madly shagging each other’s brains out every morning, noon, and night. Which, despite my previous views of my own preferences, I’m beginning to see that I would really quite like to do. Just not yet.”

(What can I say? It’s not as though he’s offered me a choice in the matter. I hate this, but will have to accept it.) I shrug, ungracious. “Then I suppose we wait,” I say. I sound unhappy. (I _am_.) 

John looks worried. “You understand though, don’t you?” 

“Of course,” I say crossly. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” I sound petulant, angry. (Suppose I am. All that time waiting, without hope, only to be put off now. Of _course_ his reasons make sense. It still feels unfair.)

He bites his lip. One of his hands reaches out to touch my knee, then retreats as he thinks better of it, perhaps reminding himself of his newly-instated rule of not-touching. “It doesn’t change anything. It’s just until this is over.”

“Yes,” I say shortly. “You said.” I angle myself away from him, trying to push down the frustration. I remember my tea and drink it, though I’ve lost interest in it. Try to remind myself that he could have easily rejected this altogether, and try to make myself feel grateful that there’s an apparent light at the end of the tunnel, yet there are so many factors, so many things that could happen between now and the end of this business with Mary. I do hope that he won’t change his mind on that front. It would be difficult to even remain friends with him if he were to go back to my would-be killer after all of this. “One condition,” I say. 

John lifts his eyebrows. “Yes?”

I speak to the coffee table. “You read the memory stick.” He doesn’t reply and a small silence falls. “You need to know what it is that you’re actively not choosing,” I say firmly. “You already know that the woman you thought her to be doesn’t exist. You need to see the woman that does exist in that woman’s place. It’s only just. To yourself and to Mary.” I could call her by her legal name, but John doesn’t even know that yet. I can hear him turning this thought over in his head, pulling it apart and examining it, and add, gentler, “I’ll still look at it with you, if you want me to. But if you want to keep the issues separate, it might be easier if you do it on your own.”

John stays silent for another few minutes. Then he nods. “Okay,” he says, his voice low but even. “That’s fair. I’ll do it soon, then. I’ll let you know when I have.”

I turn my head and look at him. We have an agreement now. We both nod, sealing it silently. “All right,” I say aloud. “Then I think I’ll go to my room now.”

John’s forehead contracts in worry again. “All right,” he echoes. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.” I pick up my laptop and go into the corridor and he lets me go. I catch myself wishing that he would call me back, but he doesn’t. I close the bedroom door behind me and close my eyes. Mycroft has been making vague hints about launching the operation around Christmas. Today is the twelfth of November. It could be a long six weeks. 

***

It takes another five days before John reads the memory stick. Over a subdued dinner – nearly everything has been subdued since the Talk – I observe an air of grim determination hanging around him and deliberately refrain from commenting on it. He is going to do it tonight. Has spent all day working up to the decision to do it. (Did something happen at the clinic with Mary to prompt it?) Decide to try a light probe. “How was work?”

John gives me a look that’s like a combination of sarcasm and dark suspicion; he knows I’m not just asking about his day. The complexity of his facial expressions never fails to amaze me. “It was all right,” he says warily, stabbing at a piece of broccoli. “Why?”

Retreat. “Just asking,” I say, dropping my gaze. 

He’s quiet for a moment, still looking at me. (Can feel it. Astonishing how much more perceptible he is to me now that we have some sort of physical connection; I’m even more aware of him now than I ever used to be. To think that I used to not notice that he’d left the flat sometimes. Regularly. It’s appalling. That could never happen, now. I am always aware of him, and when he’s gone, always too aware of that, too.) John speaks again, less defensively. “It was all right,” he says again. “Mary wasn’t even there.”

I risk a look at him. His eyes meet mine, then drop back to his plate. “No?” I say. “Where was she?”

One of his shoulders jerks. “No idea. She just didn’t come in. Didn’t call in, apparently. Couldn’t really ask; I don’t know what she told the others but they seem to know we’re separated, I suppose you’d call it.”

He still sounds like it bothers him, which pokes sharply into my gut and makes me feel cold. “You haven’t said anything?”

“No.” John eats another piece of broccoli, chews it, swallows, and takes a sip of wine. “They’re all women. I assume they talk about it. I don’t know what Mary’s said, so how can I say anything? Besides which, no one’s even asked me directly.” 

“Ah.” A silence falls, but it’s not terrible. 

After awhile, John says, “I guess I’m curious as to where she was. I mean, what was she doing, then? Is she still working? What?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. 

The rest of dinner is quiet. John changes the subject and we speak briefly about the experiment I’m currently growing in the corner of the counter. I assure him it’s not poisonous (not yet, at any rate) and he is withdrawn, all of his answers a bit clipped. After we’ve finished, he takes both our plates to the sink, rinses them, and says he’s going upstairs. 

“I was going to make tea,” I say. “Would you like some?”

“Maybe later.” John is dismissive, distant.

He takes his laptop and goes, and I try not to feel brushed off and remind myself that he’s steeling himself to read the memory stick. Feel fairly sure about that. I can see that he was correct in his assessment of himself, that he can’t quite manage juggling whatever is going through his head regarding Mary and whatever it is that he may eventually want to pursue with me, if he still does when the time comes. Am trying desperately not to think too much about this at all, which is proving nearly impossible. I want it so badly that I sleep even less than usual, thinking about it. 

I pass the evening sitting in my chair and staring at his, trying to imagine what he’s thinking as he reads. He doesn’t come downstairs by one in the morning, so I let the fire die out and go to bed. 

In the morning, John doesn’t come down for work. (Is it Saturday? Surely not; we just had Saturday recently. Check the calendar: no, it’s Thursday.) When he still hasn’t appeared by ten, I decide to go up. I feel strangely uncertain about doing so, but it’s possible that he isn’t doing well and could use a friend. (Can I still be only that to him? Can he ignore the rest and choose to accept only friendship from me, if he needs it?) I knock softly. “John?” Put my ear close to the door to listen. 

A pause, and then he responds. “Come in.” It sounds weary, resigned. 

I open the door and look at him. He’s sitting on the bed, knees pulled up to his chest, as condensed as he can possibly be. He doesn’t look at me. The laptop is open on the bed beside him, the memory stick still plugged into a USB port. His face looks as old and weary as he sounded. (Has he slept?) I decide not to say anything about the clinic. (Bugger that. He works too much as it is.) For a long moment I hesitate, watching him, evaluating, trying to decide what to say. “Are you all right?” I ask finally, knowing that it’s a stupid question. He certainly doesn’t appear to be all right, but how else is one supposed to begin?

His eyes flick darkly over to me, just once. “Not really,” he says, having already looked away again. 

Feel my lower lip bunching upward. “I didn’t think so,” I admit. “Wasn’t sure what else to say.”

John sighs. “Have you read this? Tell me honestly.”

“I really haven’t,” I tell him. “You have my word. I read Mycroft’s file – he insisted – but I don’t know if the contents match what’s on that drive.”

“Come here, then,” John says dully. “You might as well see it.” He shifts over and jerks his chin at the space beside him, lifting the laptop onto his knees. 

I go and sit down next to him, careful not to touch him, which I have the distinct feeling he wouldn’t appreciate at the moment, and take the laptop. “You’re sure?” I ask, wanting confirmation before I read it, looking at him and not the screen. 

John doesn’t turn his head; if he does, our faces will be too close. “Yeah. Go ahead,” he says, his gaze fixed on the opposite wall. 

I organise my legs to be at a height conducive to reading and devour the information. I have been yearning to see this, but didn’t want to do it without John’s explicit consent. It’s missing some of what Mycroft has, and adds in a few details that he didn’t have. Aubrey Genevieve Ridley Adams. A.G.R.A. She didn’t include that she’s wanted under a wide variety of pseudonyms in at least thirteen countries, possibly more, Mycroft said. American in origin, from some insignificant place in Ohio. I’d noticed that her accent wasn’t always consistent but couldn’t place it. She’s spent time in most parts of Europe and the file noted that she spoke Dutch fluently and Polish well. No German or French. The information links her to the Serbian group that captured me shortly before my extraction and return to London. She also chose to include, among many other things, a lot of information that’s directly about John. That she was the assassin, the sniper at the pool the day that Moriarty nearly killed us both. That she was John’s appointed assassin the day of my leap from St. Bart’s. That she was paid to get close to John, close enough to know if I had somehow survived the leap, prepared to act out her contract in such an event. That she knew of my return as of the day I landed at Heathrow by private government jet, and had watched me from the upper level of the restaurant the night that I revealed myself to John. She had decided not to kill me just then in order to prolong her cover. There’s much, much more, but this last part is what sticks in my mind, what John has sat up all night thinking about, judging by the bags under his eyes. When I finish reading, I close the laptop and put it beside me, let the silence unfurl between us. 

“What do you think?” John asks at last, after a good five minutes have gone by. “Is it all stuff you knew already?”

“Not all of it,” I say. “I didn’t know some of the details of some of the operations. Some things were only theories, kills that Mycroft’s people were tentatively linking to her, but they don’t have this confirmation.” I pause. “The parts that pertain to us, specifically, I… I knew she was there at the pool. And at St. Bart’s. I didn’t know that she was watching me in the restaurant.” Watching me steal spectacles and an eyeliner and don my ridiculous disguise as she watched from above, probably forming a rather low opinion of my talents from there. While John thought she was using the toilet or freshening her lipstick or something. 

“You knew she was paid to get into a relationship with me?” John asks. He doesn’t sound angry, just tight. Pained. 

I resist the urge to get defensive. “Yes,” I say, turning my head just a little, looking at his knee. It’s simple, quiet. Not exactly apologetic, just an admission. “Should I have told you?” I ask, my voice still low. “I thought you should find that out yourself… or at least, not from me.”

John struggles silently for a response, then says, “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t have wanted to have been told that by anyone. Not even Mary.” He pauses. “Aubrey Adams. Whatever her name is. So it was all fake. Every last bit of it. That’s what I’ve been trying to swallow. I mean, I haven’t loved her since the night I found out she shot you. I wondered then if I would change my mind because of your explanation, the excuses you gave her, but it just didn’t go away or fade at all even after weeks had gone by. That was a deal-breaker. I didn’t believe your reasons and I couldn’t accept them even if you meant what you said, which you didn’t, since, as we’ve established, she clearly did intend to kill you and only wanted it to look ambiguous. But even if she _had_ only meant to stall you, which she didn’t, it still isn’t a good enough reason to justify shooting your friend, and your husband’s best friend. I never could have accepted that. That wasn’t a question in my mind any more. But I’ve been sitting here all night thinking over every single memory I have of her, every single time we’ve laughed at something, every moment I thought was romantic or loving in any way, and realising that all of it was a lie. Every _single_ bit of it, Sherlock.”

Despite my feelings for Mary, my heart gives an uncharacteristic pang of compassion for John. “Based on a lie,” I say, as gently as I can. “I do believe that she believes she loves you, John. I do.”

He shakes his head. “Maybe, but it doesn’t work. If the foundation was rotten, it doesn’t matter what you lay over top of it.”

“I suppose that’s true.” It’s not as though I’m trying to change his mind, after all. 

“I mean, what kind of person _does_ that to someone else?” John demands. “She must think I’m a complete, absolute idiot. And she would be right. I never suspected. Why would I have? I used to think that you were a suspiciously good actor, but you never kept up a fiction like that for longer than a few minutes, usually. I suppose Janine was an exception there. How long did that go, anyway?”

“Technically about three weeks, though I only saw her every few days,” I say. “She was always planning to sell information on me, you realise. That was why I decided to start a false relationship with her. I needed her to tell Magnussen that I had started a drug habit again so that he would underestimate me.”

“Yeah, I figured that out, eventually,” John says. “But that’s what I mean: you had a reason, you were always going to tell her, and in a sense she sort of deserved it. She seems pretty happy with the financial pay-off, anyway. You wouldn’t have ever deceived someone for an entire lifetime.”

“No,” I agree. 

“And it’s not as though you could argue that Mary was trying to leave the life completely behind, either,” John says. “I tried to tell myself, before I read this, that maybe she was looking for a whole new start. That meeting me had changed her life as much as it had changed mine. I had no way of knowing that she only started working at the clinic to meet me. I thought she must have already started trying to change her ways – and even then, I still couldn’t forgive her for shooting you, but even _that_ wasn’t true, was it?”

“No,” I say again, quietly. 

“She had herself placed there. But how did she collect the fee after Moriarty had died?” John asks me. 

“We don’t know,” I tell him. “It’s a possibility but Mycroft hasn’t been able to penetrate all of her financial records yet. There are just too many pseudonyms out there.”

John shakes his head. “Either way, you can’t possibly argue for the validity of her feelings for me. It’s a moot point anyway, but still.”

I sigh. It’s essentially impossible to contradict John. And while I do think that Mary’s affections for him could be valid even given that she is running an operation that involves her cover of being married to him, he’s quite right. It doesn’t matter at this point. It doesn’t change anything. “I’m sorry, John.”

“I see why you needed me to read it,” he says, his voice dull. “I had to know this. And she acted the way she did when she gave it to me just to guilt me into not reading it. I figured that out, too. I understand it all now. But it just feels… fucking terrible. I feel like I’ll never be able to trust anyone ever again.”

“I know,” I say, the words sticking in my throat. It’s painful. (Want him to trust me, if no one else.)

John turns slightly but not far enough to look at me. “Is there anything else you know that you’re not telling me?” he asks. His voice is low and very serious. (This is important.)

I think quickly, flicking through my thoughts, of everything that Mycroft has said. “No,” I tell him. “Some of the finer points of the Magnussen plan, but nothing regarding Mary. I think you know everything now, and now that you do, Mycroft will fill you in on the rest.”

“Good,” John says abruptly. “Then hold me, for God’s sake. I could do with it.”

Relieved, I get my arms around him and pull him to my chest, my heart thumping uncomfortably. His shoulders are rigid and unforgiving against me, his body radiating anger and pain and betrayal. I feel for him, and yet I also feel privately immensely relieved that he is seemingly so decided against Mary now. One never knows. Now, he can be part of the plan, fully part of it. I’ll tell Mycroft and then Mycroft will come over and tell John and he’ll be in on all of it. That alone will make him feel a bit better, I think. We sit there for a long time, neither of us speaking. I stroke his hair and put my cheek down on his head. It feels oddly natural, though such behaviour is highly uncharacteristic for me. (It’s John. Therefore it’s natural.) After nearly thirty minutes have gone by, his shoulders finally begin to relax. “You should sleep,” I say eventually. “You must be exhausted.”

He makes a vague sound against my collarbone, then, “If I do, will you stay?”

“Of course,” I promise, surprised by how rough my voice comes out. “Always.”

***

I give John a few days to digest what he’s learned before asking him over breakfast one morning if he’s ready to hear the full plan. To my surprise, he responds enthusiastically, even when I warn him that it means that Mycroft will be coming by. John agrees without fuss, and is therefore unsurprised to see Mycroft sitting at the desk when he returns from the clinic later. 

Mycroft, naturally, grills John as though this is an interview to join the MI6, asking repeatedly if John is sure that he will go through with the plan even if it means the incarceration or incidental death of his wife. John answers insistently, growing steadily angrier, until I intervene. “For God’s sake, Mycroft, stop it!” I snap. “He’s in, all right? Just tell him the details!”

Mycroft rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, then explains about the proposed raid on Appledore. How I will take a laptop containing some heavily-protected dummy files to Magnussen, as per the agreement I proposed to him during my second hospital stay. Mycroft’s idea, naturally. Magnussen agreed, though of course he supposes that I’ll be delivering the real thing. Then I stall him long enough to allow Mycroft reasonable time to supposedly track the GPS and arrive with his team to launch the raid. John asks all the correct questions about whether he’s coming along, what happens with Mary. He points out that if Mary finds out that we’re going to get our hands on Magnussen’s information, she will do everything in her power to stop it. 

“Yes,” Mycroft says. “I know.” He shoots me a quick, semi-approving look; I had told him that John would be all right about the implications regarding Mary sometime after he read the memory stick. Mycroft’s eyes go back to John. “It is now three weeks and two days until Christmas. You will begin softening toward Mary. Let her think that you’ve had your sulk and that you’re cautiously beginning to entertain the concept of reconciliation. You need to feed her false hope, but don’t overdo it. One week before Christmas, you will invite her to come to our parents’ home for Christmas dinner. Be convincing enough that she accepts. She will need adequate notice to install surveillance at my parents’ house, which we will later use as evidence against her. There will be staged conversations designed to mislead her, and you will officially forgive her. Then Sherlock will knock everyone out, myself included, take the dummy laptop and go to Appledore. You will go with him, and I will be right behind you.”

John looks at me. “All right,” he says slowly. “And if something goes wrong at Appledore before you get there?”

Mycroft shakes his head. “He is not a violent man. Ruthless, yes, and would do nearly anything to turn a profit, but I don’t believe he’ll even be armed. He may even be alone.”

“And then you arrive and storm the vaults,” John says. “Right. So what do we do when we get there?”

Mycroft arches his brows. “Allow him to think that he has won. Stall him. The deal is supposed to be a trade for Mary’s information. It’s the only believable reason you could be there.”

“Ah,” John says. “Yes. Of course.” He looks at me again. “You met with Magnussen while you were in the hospital?”

“In the cafeteria,” I say, and don’t elaborate. “You had gone back to your flat for a bit.”

“Okay,” John says, still obviously full of questions, but he leaves them (wisely) alone. “And after the raid? What do you expect Mary will do then?”

“It depends slightly on what her information contains,” Mycroft says, with a glance at me, the question almost imperceptible. I nod at him. Mycroft inhales and recrosses his legs the other way. “We are then staging Moriarty’s return from the dead. It is, and I trust you won’t object to this, an effort to flush Mary out, as it were. Moriarty will come after her regarding the outstanding contract and demand that she fill it. We had initially thought of having Moriarty offer her a contract on Magnussen, but we’re hoping to have him in custody by then. So, we go after the unfulfilled contract on you. We then watch to see what she does. If she goes to him and offers to pay back the fee in return for being released from the contract, it will shorten her sentence somewhat. If she goes to meet him with the intent of killing him, whether up close or at a sniper range, we will be prepared, and the sentence will be heavier.”

He stops and looks at me to put voice to the third option, but John beats me to it. “Or she comes after me,” he says quietly. “I see.”

“Which is why you have to forgive her convincingly on Christmas Day,” I tell him, trying to soften it. “To keep yourself safe. You don’t have to be over the top, just let her think that, while you’re still angry, you’ve essentially forgiven her, still want to be married to her, all of that. It has to sound convincing, but realistic.”

John’s mouth purses; he looks troubled. “All right,” he says dubiously. “I’ll do my best.”

(Want to touch him, but can’t.) “I’ll write it for you,” I promise. 

John gives a small laugh at that, through his nose. “Maybe,” he says. He looks at Mycroft. “Is there anything else?”

Mycroft actually hears it as the dismissal that it is and gets to his feet, hooking his umbrella over his arm. “I’ll be in touch.” He fixes John with a critical gaze and says, “Not to impugn your considerable skill set in any way, but your relentless honesty has always been something of a failing on your part,” he says. “You will have to work very hard to convince the likes of Aubrey Adams that you have truly forgiven her.” His eyes cut to me. “And _do_ try to conceal from her the fact that you’ve decided to become physically involved with my brother. _Really_ ridiculous choice of timing on both your parts. I did warn Sherlock, but it seems that you’re equally susceptible to the lure of sentiment. I would advise you to avoid even being in each other’s presence in front of Mary if at all possible. It’s fairly transparent.”

He tosses another chiding/annoyed/smug look my way, then strides from the flat. I get up and close the door after him, wondering uneasily if John will be angry about this. (This is, after all, precisely what he was hoping to avoid.) To my surprise, he’s laughing. “What?” I ask, startled by his reaction. 

John gets off the chair and comes to meet me in the middle of the room, his face affectionate, if not entirely relaxed. “And this is us trying _not_ to do this,” he says wryly. “Imagine how much more obvious it could have been. I thought it was quite subtle, personally.”

Feel my lip curl. “Nothing is subtle to Mycroft. He sees everything.”

John’s smile fades. “So, these staged conversations,” he says. “What are we supposed to say?”

(He’s not going to touch me, then. Had thought that perhaps the flare of rueful affection might extend that far, but evidently not.) I clear my throat and move away, toward my laptop. “Mycroft thinks that Mary will set up audio feeds in and around the house. He and I are planning on a conversation in the garden that will suggest that I’ve lost interest in Magnussen. I will drug the punch and anything that Mary drinks so that everyone is knocked out. We’ll tell her later that I forced you to come along as back-up. Mary will be contained for as long as the drug lasts, I’ll leave someone there to supervise, and you will say angry things about the drugging and how I’m out of my mind if I’m selling Mycroft out to Magnussen or something along those lines, and then Magnussen’s chopper will arrive to take us to Appledore. We’ll work out the details.”

John nods. “Okay,” he says. “And how exactly is Mycroft going to stage Moriarty’s return from the dead? I mean… it just seems…”

“Really don’t ask,” I tell him dryly, and he smiles despite himself and shakes his head. 

“Fine,” he says. He glances at me, and I can feel that he wants to touch me, but doesn’t. He looks away again. “I’ll go and start dinner, then. If I’ve got to start pretending I’m changing my mind at work tomorrow, I’ll need to keep up my strength.” He says this all fairly sarcastically, as though he’s preparing for battle of another kind. 

I take my laptop to the chair and sit down and pretend that I’m looking at it and not secretly watching John cook. (He probably knows. It doesn’t matter.)

***

The next few weeks go by as slowly as they possibly can. Mycroft bothers me at least once per day about arrangements. And John resolutely avoids anything remotely physical between us, even to the point of holding his own hands sometimes in a rather obvious gesture of self-repression. I respect the boundary he has set between us and keep my private frustration with that to myself. The day after my brother met with us both, John comes home and tells me with a sigh that he spoke voluntarily to Mary, asking her a question about something ordinary. When I ask how she responded, he tells me that she looked surprised and sounded a bit short, but answered the question.

“Was there anything else?” I ask of the exchange. 

Quick shake of his head, his mouth set. “That was hard enough. If she doesn’t take that as the concession it is, then she’s an idiot.”

I refrain from asking anything else. I want to ask all the time, every day, ask about the entirety of their interactions. (Will John kiss her when he forgives her? That would be painful to watch. It’s painful just to think about.) He’s good about volunteering information about it, though I doubt he could list every possible interaction, every look or loaded silence. Another day he tells me that he thanked Mary for announcing his last patient. She’d paused, then said he was welcome, apparently. It continues like this, one or two tiny exchanges per day, John giving the slow, stilted indications that he might be softening, ever so reluctantly. Meanwhile, he continues to keep me at arm’s length. I understand it but sometimes the silences in our evenings stretch out for so long that I feel that a chasm is opening between us as John drifts in his thoughts. I can never allow myself to feel sure of him. He doesn’t touch me deliberately, though he doesn’t shrink away when it happens by accident. 

There is only one time that he relents, eight days before Christmas. We’re making dinner together one night after he’s come home from the clinic and through no conscious design of my own, we keep touching accidentally, his arm grazing mine as he reaches for something, my fingers brushing against his by mistake when we both reach into the silverware drawer at the same time. Even these small touches are making my face heat and distracting me, causing me to nearly slice my finger open as I chop garlic. I’m semi-hard in my trousers and steadfastly trying to ignore it. The operation is nearly ready to roll. After the Appledore raid on Christmas Day, we’ll have all of Mary’s financial records and be able to determine what sort of sentence she should receive, then force her hand with Moriarty’s return. See how bad it is, how deeply the poison runs. I can wait that long. Two weeks, perhaps. And then – I am trying desperately not to hope too hard, not to even think about it too much, but my heart wants badly to believe that John will still want this. 

“Sherlock.” His voice jolts me from my thoughts now. 

I stop chopping and look at him. “Yes?”

His eyes meet mine, his cheeks flush, then he looks away, up at the cupboard above him. “Could you get the colander down? You put it on the very highest shelf again.”

“Oh. Sorry.” John is standing precisely where I would need to stand in order to reach him, but perhaps I can still get it. I move to stand just over his left shoulder and stretch up for it, over his head. I must have put it a little too far back even for myself; I have to lean forward for it and accidentally lean against John as I do so. He freezes as I snag the colander and I realise he must have felt it, felt my arousal against himself. (Slightly humiliating, that.) And the contact feels almost painfully good; it’s been nearly five weeks since the night of our dinner in the Turkish restaurant and the Talk afterward. (Have been forced to take up masturbation again of late, and it’s not helping at the moment. Perhaps it’s only made me more responsive.) 

Neither of us are moving; I haven’t backed away the way I should have, and John hasn’t shoved me away. Then he turns around, eyes ablaze, and just as I’m steeling myself for a lecture or stern/angry reminder of our agreement, he throws himself forward and that’s the end of any thoughts of apologies or resistance. Our mouths and hands attack each other, my hips twisting forward to trap his against the counter. John’s teeth graze my lips and bring the copper tang of blood to my tongue and it’s so intensely erotic that I can’t breathe. The colander gets dropped (where, I don’t know and couldn’t possibly care) and John’s hands are ripping at the zip of my trousers. Realise mine are doing the same thing without specific direction on my part, and that’s fine. It’s good. It’s very good. I am so plaintively hungry for him that I would do anything for this right now, anything to have him again. He pants my name into my neck and he’s a little too short for this, but I’m pulling him up to me, knees bent a little to try to accommodate him and we’re pushing against each other, our penises caught between our abdomens, rubbing together, aided by the slickness of both of us leaking already. I’m so aroused that it’s certainly not going to take long on my part, and John’s already rasping, groaning from deep in his throat. Feel his teeth on my Adam’s apple and make a sound so loud that Mrs Hudson is sure to hear it. I’m thrusting against him in a set rhythm now, slamming him against the counter and the cupboard doors are banging loudly with it. The vibrations cause the knife I was using to chop the garlic to clatter to the floor, followed by the pepper mill a few moments later. John is becoming very vocal, fingers digging painfully into my back and arse and the added sensory perception only adds to the tight grip of pleasure squeezing my entire frame and then I’m coming before I can help myself, John’s name gutting itself from my throat in a moan as my hips and penis batter his, semen splattering his stomach where I’ve yanked his shirt up. John swears at this, a steady stream of _Jesus, fuck, Sherlock, yes, Christ_ and as my sight begins to clear in the aftermath I remember myself and take him into my hand, jerking him roughly, hard, growling in his ear to come, now, and he does, in three long, hard spasms in my arms, breath exploding in a gasp as he orgasms. When he can breathe again, he pulls his face out of my neck and kisses me hard, fingers winding into my hair and gripping. After, he says, voice ragged from the abuse he just laid on it, “That was – ”

“I know,” I say, still breathing hard myself. Kiss him again, again. “It was.”

He allows it, kissing back, then straightens his shoulders and I know it’s over, this little interlude of indiscretion. “Oops,” he says, smiling ruefully. He rubs a hand over his hair and I move away from him with great reluctance. He turns back to the sink and turns on the water, washing me off his hands and belly. “Are you all right?” he asks, not looking back at me. “Your chest, I mean. The wound. That was, um, intense.”

“It’s fine,” I tell him. “It’s healed, more or less.” I wait until he’s done before washing my own. “So.” Attempt to recover my composure. “Dinner.”

“Right,” John says. He retrieves the pepper mill and the knife from the floor and goes back to peeling potatoes. I can see out of the corner of my eye that he’s smiling and trying not to. 

Two weeks, I tell myself. Then this will be over. No: then this will be allowed to properly begin. 

***

After dinner he tells me before disappearing up to his room that he invited Mary for dinner. (That explains it, then; his willingness to allow what happened. As the lie increased, so did his need to confirm the truth. This realisation is somewhat reassuring. I am his truth.) 

“Did she accept?” I ask. 

“She said she would think about it,” John says. He pauses, one foot in the doorway. “I almost wish she would say no. I know it’s for the operation, but it will be Christmas.” His unspoken objection is charming. 

“I know.” I choose not to ridicule it. Make a wry joke instead. “Not precisely how I’d envisioned bringing you home for Christmas.”

John actually does smile at that, briefly. He pauses as though he’s going to say something else, then changes his mind. He points at the stairs as though explaining where he’s going, then leaves without another word. 

***

Mary accepts the invitation three days before Christmas. Mycroft arranges for our parents to go into town to finish their Christmas shopping when surveillance picks up Mary leaving London. He meets them for dinner to stall their return as his ninjas install stealth mode wireless pick-ups to piggy-back the data feed from Mary’s cameras, then returns my parents home with promises to see them again in a few days’ time. When I ask John how Mary accepted the invitation, he tells me. 

“She wanted to know why I’d asked her, and I said that it was Christmas and that I thought we should be together for it, even if we’re having some problems. She seemed surprised. She said that, in that case, she would come, but doesn’t know what I’m expecting of her.” John sighs. “So, she’s coming. I told her to be there for four, and that I’d meet her there.”

“Good,” I say. Am glad that John is still planning on coming with me. “Bill Wiggins is confirmed. He’ll keep an eye on everything, just to make sure that my parents are all right. Mary won’t realise yet where we’ve gone and my parents’ genuine confusion will tell her nothing. She’ll be weaker than my parents; Bill is preparing something to knock Mary out a little more strongly than them. Mycroft’s dosage will be the lightest, so she’ll see on her feed that he was drugged, too, that I was obviously behind it without your knowledge, and then she’ll see Mycroft ‘notice’ his missing laptop and overhear his call for a back-up and pursuit. It will all look like neither he nor you had anything to do with it. I’ll take the fall regarding her anger. I don’t want her targeting Mycroft, who is absolute rubbish when it comes to anything calling for physical action or defending himself. And I don’t want her coming after you. Obviously.”

John acknowledges this with a nod. “All right,” he says. 

The days slip by. On Christmas Eve, we’re alone in the flat. Mrs Hudson has gone to Majorca with Mr Chatterjee and the house is quiet. When the fire’s burned low in the grate, John looks over at me. “Merry Christmas, Sherlock,” he says quietly. 

Stirred from my thoughts, I look back at him. “Merry Christmas.”

He stands and puts his hands in his trouser pockets and looks down at me. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. Tomorrow is going to be one of the hardest days of my life, I think. Maybe it would be better to keep our distance now so that it’s not as difficult to pretend it’s not happening, but I just don’t want to not be with you tonight. It’s Christmas Eve.” 

His forehead never loses that troubled wrinkle that it’s had all autumn, but I agree anyway, despite his internal conflicts. “All right.”

John steps closer to me, lifts his chin and kisses me chastely. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to bed.” He leads the way to the bedroom, my bedroom, as though it belongs to him. Without a word, he strips down to his undergarments and goes to the left side. His usual side (have deduced this from having seen his flat). I go to the far side, divest myself of my clothing and join him. There’s a bit of slightly-awkward physical negotiation until we’ve found a suitable arrangement, which seems to be with me curled behind him, knees resting against the undersides of his thighs. My arm is around him and he’s pressing my hand into his chest, where I can feel his steady heartbeat. Apparently sleep is the only thing on the menu tonight, and at the moment I’m content with that. Couldn’t care less what night of the year it is, but am happy enough to be sleeping with John at last. 

“Are you worried about tomorrow?” I ask into the tension at the base of his neck. I touch my lips to it. “It’s going to be fine. Mycroft’s plans are generally quite good.”

“It’s just the lying,” John admits. His hand tightens over mine. “Your speech is good. It sounds like something I would say. I’ve got it memorised and I’ve even practised saying it in the mirror.”

(Want to ask for a private recitation, but am wholly convinced that he would refuse flat-out.) “It’ll be okay,” I say, inadequately. (Am rubbish at reassurance.)

“Will you eavesdrop?” John asks. 

Hesitate. (That’s answer enough.) “Probably,” I say aloud. 

He exhales. (Is it a sigh?) “Why did I ask?” he says to himself. “I suppose that’s inevitable.” 

“Rather, I’m afraid.” Kiss his neck again, then again. 

John twists around until he’s facing me, intercepts my next kiss with his mouth. We kiss and kiss and no one says anything. It feels like silent promises. (It isn’t. Nothing is certain.) 

***

“…If ’e does get murdered or something…” Bill is saying. Best curb that; can feel my mother looking appalled from here. 

“Probably stop talking now,” I say, eyes still scanning the article on Lord Smallwood’s suicide. (I failed to solve the case. Couldn’t retrieve the letters; Mary shot me before I could do it. The letters went public and Lord Smallwood took his life. Lady Smallwood has, clearly, not been in touch. The suicide only just occurred yesterday. My private hatred for Magnussen grows.)

“Okay,” Bill says.

No one’s really listening to him anyway, and that’s fine. Mycroft drawls something sarcastic in my direction and my mother says something about tea and Mary. This catches my attention. I start the timer, then text John. _Tea delivered. Go._

He doesn’t respond, but after a moment, I can hear his voice join my father and Mary’s in the sitting room and then my father comes back into the kitchen. “Those two,” he says to me as I stand and put on my coat. “They all right?”

“Well, you know,” I say vaguely. “They’ve had their ups and downs.” I’ve decided I can’t stomach eavesdropping on the forgiveness speech after all. I need a cigarette, and it’s time to stage a conversation with my brother for the sake of Mary’s audio feeds anyway. 

He joins me after a couple of minutes, for once not commenting on the cigarette. Instead, he lights one up, himself. “I’m glad you’ve given up on the Magnussen business,” he says, as planned. 

“Are you?” I respond, following the script. 

“I’m still curious, though. He’s hardly your usual kind of puzzle. Why do you hate him?” Mycroft has memorised his lines perfectly. (Of course he has.)

I turn to face him. “Because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets. Why don’t you?” (This would have been my answer regardless. I think of way Magnussen casually assumes ownership over anything that crosses his path and a good many things that don’t. He’s vile.)

Mycroft shrugs. “He never causes too much damage to anyone important.” The audio feed is halfway down the path, precisely where we’ve stopped. “He’s far too intelligent for that. He’s a business man, that’s all, and occasionally useful to us. A necessary evil. Not a dragon for you to slay.”

We intended this, for it to sound like brotherly advice. For it to be convincing, I can’t just accept it too easily, though. I smirk and go around to stand beside him. United for the cause again, I feel a rare – very rare – spot of something almost resembling affection for him at this choice of words. “A dragon slayer. Is that what you think of me?”

Mycroft smiles indulgently. (Perhaps he’s feeling it, too.) “No. It’s what you think of yourself.”

The door opens and our mother appears. “Are you two smoking?” she demands. (She always did have a sixth sense for that sort of thing.)

“No!” Mycroft denies instantly. 

“It was Mycroft!” I manage as best I can, having just inhaled. 

She scowls a scowl I’ve seen on Mycroft’s face dozens of times and closes the door. She knows, of course. I exhale. Mycroft takes a few steps away before turning back, his demeanour suddenly careful. “I have, by the way, a job offer I should like you to decline.”

What is this? It wasn’t something we discussed talking about in this staged conversation. I wonder if I can even ask about it with Mary’s audio feeds scattered around the house and garden “I decline your kind offer,” I say with feigned simplicity. 

“I shall pass on your regrets,” Mycroft says, in the same tone. His face is inscrutable. 

I’m curious, though. If he can’t say, he won’t. “What was it?” I ask, despite myself. 

“MI6,” Mycroft tells me, despite the feeds. Perhaps he wants Mary to know that the MI6 _would_ hire me, that I’m more dangerous than she realises. A calculated move on his part. (Surely it isn’t sentiment? It _is_ Christmas. Startling what effect this date can have on people, even hardened cynics like my brother.) “They want to place you back into Eastern Europe. An undercover assignment that would prove fatal to you in, I think, about six months.”

Am not sure what to make of this, so I say ask lightly, “Then why don’t you want me to take it?”

Mycroft looks at me, smug smile firmly in place. “It’s tempting… but on balance you have more utility closer to home.”

Is this meant to be code? A warning to Mary: yes. “How do _I_ have utility?” Inhale again. The nicotine is washing over me and helping ease the tightness in my chest at the thought of Mary accepting John’s forgiveness in the sitting room about now. 

“‘Here be dragons’,” Mycroft quotes. He takes another pull from the cigarette then frowns at it, coughing. “This isn’t agreeing with me. I’m going in.” Meaning: he’s feeling the effects of the punch and needs to go and stage himself with appropriate drama for his impending swoon. He grinds the cigarette out on the path. 

“You need low tar,” I remind him. “You still smoke like a beginner.”

Mycroft stops without turning, close to the door – as far from the audio feeds as possible. “Also,” he says, “your loss would break my heart.”

This ridiculously overly-sentimental statement takes me quite by surprise, making me choke on the inhalation I was just about to take. “What the _hell_ am I supposed to say to that?!” I demand. 

Mycroft turns and gestures with his arms. “Merry Christmas?” he suggests. I hear the veiled warning. _It’s about to start. Be careful._

“You hate Christmas,” I say. _You don’t usually worry like this._

“Yes.” He smiles briefly. “Perhaps there was something in the punch.”

“Clearly,” I say dryly. “Go and have some more.” He has forty-five seconds before he’ll pass out. He acknowledges this grimly and goes in. 

I wait long enough to finish my cigarette, then turn on my best face and rush inside. John first. The timing was perfect; Mary is sagged into an armchair, clearly unconscious, John bent over her. “Don’t drink Mary’s tea,” I say for the benefit of the audio feed and cameras. It’s important she know that John had (supposedly) nothing to do with this. (Rubbish; he helped Bill concoct her dosage himself.) “Or the punch,” I add, for the same reason. I go into the adjacent room where my father is lying on his back on the sofa. I check that he’s breathing normally, then go into the kitchen. My mother is sitting in the armchair and Mycroft has arranged himself over the kitchen table. They’re both fine, too. Perfect. Bill is standing at the counter, watching, as planned. 

“Sherlock?” John says. “Did you just drug my pregnant wife?” (Perfectly on-schedule. His acting skills are coming along a treat. Mycroft should approve.) 

“Don’t worry,” I say, passing a hand under my brother’s nose. “Wiggins is an excellent chemist.”

“I calculated your wife’s dose meself. Won’t affect the little one. I’ll keep an eye on ’er.” Bill knows very well that there’s no “little one”. He’s playing his part perfectly, too. 

I put my scarf on. “He’ll monitor their recovery,” I say, as if John doesn’t know. “It’s more or less his day job.” Except that I am actually paying him for this; playing den mother doesn’t tend to bring in much in the way of remuneration. 

“What the hell have you done?” John wants to know, following his lines. 

I pause dramatically, gazing at the kitchen floor. Time to “confess” what I’ve done. “A deal with the devil.” Following the lines Mycroft and John and I prepared in the sitting room of 221B, I outline the nature of my meeting with Magnussen, leaving out the part where I was wrong about his glasses. Mary doesn’t need to know that. “I promised I would trade him Mycroft for Mary’s safety,” I tell John now, in conclusion. I gesture at the dummy laptop that Mycroft is slumped over. It was a joke of his that he would leave it carelessly about to collect potato peelings. (As if Mycroft would even bring a computer containing sensitive information within ten kilometres of Aubrey Adams.)

John turns slightly away. “Oh, Jesus,” he says softly. He walks away, into the sitting room, looking down at my unconscious father. We thought that he should appear adequately shocked by my deal with Magnussen and he’s conveying that well. “Please tell me you haven’t just gone out of your mind,” he says from the sitting room. 

I pull my gloves on and slide the laptop out from under Mycroft’s face. “I’d rather keep you guessing.” There’s a pause wherein John is supposed to be looking as though he’s debating going into the other part of the sitting room where Mary is asleep. Outside, the beat of a helicopter propeller can be heard. “There’s our lift,” I say. 

John comes back into the kitchen and looks out the window. I pick up his coat and scarf and he silently follows me outside. Mycroft’s people determined that the outdoor audio feeds were placed as far as five kilometres from the house. Even outside the garden proper, it’s likely we’ll be recorded. John is already outside the gate, watching the helicopter land. “Coming?” I ask, stopping beside him. 

“Where?” John demands, still feigning wrath. 

“Do you want your wife to be safe?” I ask, per the script. 

“Yeah, of course I do,” he says, eyes still fixed on the chopper. 

“Good, because this is going to be _incredibly_ dangerous. One false move and we’ll have betrayed the security of the United Kingdom and be in prison for high treason. Magnussen is, quite simply, the most dangerous man we’ve ever encountered, and the odds are comprehensively stacked against us.”

“But it’s Christmas,” John says petulantly – as though nothing else is unusual about this Christmas, as though he hasn’t just apparently staged a dramatic reunion with the wife he’s been separated from for the past three months and as though everything up to and including my having drugged everyone in the house would have still made for an acceptable Christmas save getting into this helicopter with me now. The entire chain of thought is amusing. 

I find myself smiling. Or possibly smirking. “I feel the same.” Pretend to register his face. “Oh, you mean it’s _actually_ Christmas. Did you bring your gun as I suggested?”

“Why would I bring my gun to your parents’ house for Christmas dinner?” This is perfect; one of those things that John says when he’s thinks he’s supposed to establish normative behaviour, when in fact we both know perfectly well that he brought the gun, and would have even if I hadn’t told him to in the first place, operation or otherwise. 

I follow my lines and keep my thoughts to myself, hold out his coat to him as planned. “Is it in your coat?”

“Yes,” John says, taking it from me. 

“Off we go, then.” I start to walk, John already falling into step beside me. 

“Where are we going?” It’s his last line in our script. 

“Appledore,” I say, which is mine. 

Magnussen’s men silently usher us into the helicopter. John gives me a dubious look, but touches my arm very briefly just before getting in. This _will_ be dangerous, and he knows it. So do I, but it doesn’t matter. We are going to have Magnussen after this, and then Mycroft will launch Lazarus II and shortly after that, we’ll have Mary, too. 

***

I am wrong. I am disastrously wrong. My mind is a blank. How could I have not guessed this? (How _could_ I have guessed this? Magnussen has had me misstepping from the start. Mycroft was right; I really was out of my depth. Damn him. Damn them both. He is going to arrive within minutes and there is no raid to be had, not unless he can find a legal reason to hold Magnussen and interrogate every last piece of knowledge he holds out of him. This is impossible. It will never happen. The only way to silence Magnussen and his hoard of dangerous information would be to kill him.) 

When I didn’t answer his question about whether or not I had a plan (which was answer in and of itself), John followed Magnussen outside. He, too, is waiting for Mycroft and the agents to arrive. Still awash with my aghast feeling of utter failure, I attempt to achieve control over my mind, rein in my inner panic and go outside. I’m all too aware that I cannot leave John alone with Magnussen.

“You just know things,” John is saying to him. “How does that work?” 

Magnussen ignores the question. “I just love your little soldier face. I’d like to punch it. Bring it over here a minute.”

John stares back at him, then looks toward me. 

“Come on,” Magnussen prods. 

My intestines twist like snakes within me. Until there are witnesses present, there is nothing I can do, not without bringing suspicion onto John. I nod at him, hating myself for doing it. (This is it, then. This is where we break.) 

“For Mary,” Magnussen says, horribly pleasant. “Bring me your face.” John moves closer, breathing through his nose. Magnussen leans down. “Lean forward a bit and stick your face out.” John clears his throat, hesitating, shifting his weight. “Please?” Magnussen is enjoying this far too much. (Want to kill him. I want to kill him in a way that I have never actively wished in my life before.) “Now, can I flick it?” he asks John, chuckling. John manages not to speak, shaking his head and smiling the smile that means he is trying very hard not to lose control of his temper but knows that he may not be able to prevent it happening regardless. “Can I flick your face?” Magnussen repeats. 

John’s mouth tightens but he leans forward. Magnussen flicks him on the left cheek, laughing when John flinches. He rallies, though, not moving, not backing away. Another flick. “I just love doing this,” Magnussen announces blandly, still smiling. 

John glances at me, his silent _Do something!_ plain. I can’t do anything, not yet. I look away, pained. 

“I could do it all day,” Magnussen says. Another bland chuckle, like nails on a chalkboard. “It works like this, John. I know who Mary hurt and killed.” Flick. “I know where to find people who hate her.” Flick. Flick. John is enduring it, but only just. “I know where they live. I know their phone numbers.” Flick. Flick. “All in my mind palace. _All_ of it. I could phone them right now and tear your whole life down – and I will. Unless you let me flick your face.” Flick. Flick. Flick. 

(Will kill him for this, with my bare hands if I have to.)

“This is what I do to people,” Magnussen continues. “This is what I do to whole countries. Just because I _know_.” Another flick. “Can I do your eye now?”

John turns his face away, ducking his chin. (Self-preservation.)

“See if you can keep it open, hmm?” Flick, directed at the eye. John flinches again, which causes Magnussen to laugh, sneering. Flick. “Come on. For Mary. Keep it open.”

“Sherlock.” John finally speaks, the desperation clear in his voice. The humiliation of it, the overt taunting is getting to him. John can handle pain and hardship and loss but he cannot tolerate not being respected. Magnussen might as well be pissing on him instead of our fireplace now. John is seconds away from snapping. 

(Where is Mycroft? I can’t act until they arrive. Did something go wrong with his dosage? Has Mary figured it out that quickly?) “Just… let him.” I hate myself for saying it, but Magnussen is watching me curiously. John grimaces. It’s more than possible that he will never forgive me for this, though I intend to make it up to him as soon as I possibly can. 

“Come on. Eye open,” Magnussen says to John. Flick. John flinches again and glares at Magnussen, breath ragged with hatred. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? Janine managed it once,” he says, directing this to me. “She makes the funniest noises.”

So: he’s had her killed, then. More rage adds itself to the fire burning in my gut. It was true, what she said: she used me for fame and money and I used her to gain access to Magnussen, and yet, despite all that, we could have been friends. Had I been open with her from the beginning, we could probably have come to that arrangement easily enough, sparing me the need to come up with ever more creative excuses to avoid sleeping with her. Finally, _finally_ a helicopter is approaching, circling over the house and then dropping to hover in front of the patio. Mycroft, at last. (Where the hell has he _been_?) The agents swarm in from either side of the house. Mycroft switches on the loudspeaker. “Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: stand away from that man.”

I’m looking at Magnussen, who shouts, “Here we go, Mr Holmes!”

I go to John’s side and raise my voice. Timing will be important here. “To clarify: Appledore’s vaults only exist in your mind, nowhere else, just there.”

Magnussen agrees with me. “They’re not real. They never _have_ been.”

I nod, glance toward John’s pocket. (It’s on the left side, as usual. Verified that before I gave him the coat.) Mycroft repeats the announcement above the beating of the propellers.

“It’s fine!” Magnussen shouts, cheerily. “They’re harmless!”

John turns to me, urgent. “Sherlock, what do we do?” He’s near panic, his desperation not having dissipated at all. He’s in a rage and unable to think clearly. (Not fully certain that I’m in any position to speak to this; my own thoughts are clouded with anger at the moment. Nonetheless, I’ve made my decision and I’m not changing it. It needs to happen.)

“Nothing!” Magnussen answers before I can. “There’s nothing to be done! Oh, I’m not a villain. I have no evil plan. I’m a business man, acquiring assets. You happen to be one of them.”

I answer silently, gaze boring into John, trying to communicate my intent. 

“Sorry.” Magnussen is addressing me now. “No chance for you to be a hero this time, Mr Holmes.” 

Mycroft is repeating his order; he and I had no contingency plan for this. We agreed that, in extremity, Magnussen would have to be taken by force if need be, but we have not discussed what I am about to do. “Stand away from that man. Do it, now!” Mycroft shouts. 

“Oh, _do_ your research,” I tell Magnussen. My hand slips into John’s coat pocket and withdraws the gun before he can feel its absence. “I’m not a hero,” I say, walking toward Magnussen. “I’m a high-functioning sociopath.” I have absolutely zero qualms about this. It has to be done, and since it has to be done with John’s gun, I’ve ensured that there are witnesses in place so that there can be no question about who did it. For every flick, for Lord and Lady Smallwood, for Janine, for everyone else whose life he has ruined, but above all, for John. “Merry Christmas!” I aim at Magnussen’s head and fire. Peripherally I see John duck, recoiling instinctively at the gunfire as Magnussen’s body jerks and falls backwards. (No chance of the bullet acting like a cork, not when you’re not trying to make the shot look ambiguous and shot your victim in the head. It’s cleaner this way.) I drop the gun and raise my hands. “Get away from me, John!” I look over my shoulder at him. It’s important he not be seen as an accomplice. “Stay well back!”

“Christ, Sherlock!” He sounds shocked, raising his own hands. 

Mycroft is issuing desperate-sounding orders at his men to hold their fire. The nightmarish quality of the scene deepens, the wind rushing strangely around my ears. 

“Oh, Christ, Sherlock,” John says again, sounding anguished. He knows what this looks like. What it is. I’ve just shot a man in plain sight of a dozen witnesses. 

I might as well play this out to the last. “Give my love to Mary,” I tell him. “Tell her she’s safe now.” I mean that; when Mary finds out that John was here, she’ll be livid, and dangerous. Knowing that her information died with Magnussen should calm her, though. (What will this do with Operation Lazarus II? Will Mycroft change his mind, stop it?) I get to my knees in surrender and let the agents take me into custody. Over the wind, I can just make out the sound of John weeping behind me. 

***

Mycroft comes to the holding cell that night. I estimate the time to be around half-past three in the morning. They took my phone; don’t know for certain. His face is stern. For awhile he just stands there, not speaking. 

Finally I growl out, “Just get it over with. Or better yet, spare me the lecture and just tell me what you’re going to do with me.”

“It’s somewhat out of my hands, Sherlock,” Mycroft says. He’s very sober. “I am doing my best to negotiate, but it looks like the best possible option will be to have you take that assignment, after all. It may be all I can do.”

Ah. The six-month suicide mission. That. I push myself into a sitting position; the cot is already growing uncomfortable. “Do I get any say in any of it?”

“No.” Mycroft is short. “It was all I could do to keep them from gunning you down on the spot. You’ve put me in quite an awkward position here. Given that I’m your brother, my influence holds far less sway in this matter.” He straightens and looks at me. “However, I will do my best to move Lazarus II forward. Hopefully the horror value of Moriarty’s supposed return will be enough to get you extracted within the first week or so. You’ll just have to keep yourself alive until then.”

“Is it ready to go, then?” I ask. “Your technical minions have finished hacking the cable networks?”

“More or less,” Mycroft says. His phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out to read, then says, “Ah. Excuse me.”

“Mycroft – ”

“I’ll be right back.” He disappears around the corner. 

I’m alone down here, the last cell in a white-walled corridor of holding cells in the heart of MI5 territory. No one has even questioned me; I suppose what I did was so clear-cut there was no need. What about motive, though? Shouldn’t they be trying to establish a motive? Even Lestrade would have known _that_. Wish Lestrade were on my case. 

Mycroft returns, but he’s not alone. “To the right. Last cell,” he says, and to my vast relief, John appears. 

I’m on my feet in an instant, wide awake. “John!”

“Sherlock.” His voice and face are full of relief. He is in front of me in two seconds. The wall is all bars; I’m considered a high-security prisoner and therefore must be visible at all times, in all positions, so there are only bars. John puts his hands over mine and kisses me through the bars. The fact that he’s kissing me at all is such a relief that my knees nearly buckle. The bars make it awkward but not impossible. After several minutes, he leans his forehead against mine and says, “You absolute _idiot_. What the _hell_ were you thinking? Jesus Christ, Sherlock! You didn’t have to _do_ that.”

“Yes I did,” I correct him, my voice hoarse, licking my lips where they’re still wet from his. “For every flick. For every insult.”

“God,” John breathes, and puts his mouth back on mine. When he pulls away again, several moments later, his eyes are wet. “But what happens now?” he asks. His eyes are haggard and intense; he looks like he’s aged a year in the past ten hours. “I just got through with the questioning myself, and God only knows what they’re going to do with you. What am I supposed to do? Just go home to Mary? I supposedly forgave her, remember – she’ll be expecting it.”

I shake my head. “I suppose you’ll have to,” I admit, hating it. “Mycroft is trying to bargain to get me sent on some suicide mission in Serbia. Where I was last, before I came home. They wanted me to go even before this but Mycroft didn’t have a chance to tell them I’d said no. It’s our only bargaining chip. But he’s going to try to launch Lazarus II within the week and hopes that he’ll be able to bring me back after just a few days. You’ll have to carry on as though you have no idea what’s going on and just do your best with Mary, I suppose.”

John looks dubious. “It won’t be hard pretending I don’t have a clue,” he says, “since I don’t. But Mary – how am I supposed to fake that?”

“How did the forgiveness go over?” I ask, both wanting and not wanting to know. 

“Well,” John says. “I think I was convincing. She was pretty cool at first, since I’d ignored her for the first hour we were at your parents’, but she got pretty emotional. I couldn’t even bring myself to kiss her, though. I mean – what am I supposed to do about, er, all that?”

(Sex, he means.) I point out the obvious. “Will she even want to?” I ask. “She’s wearing a fake belly. How could she possibly let you see her unclothed?” (Hideous thought, but it has to be addressed.)

“Right,” John says. “So I imagine that will be awkward. Maybe she’ll be the one to refuse it, then? I hope so. This is going to be so weird.”

“So when Moriarty makes his miraculous return to the world of the living, you’ll have to be as shocked as anyone else,” I remind him. “And watch her reactions, but make sure she doesn’t catch you at it.”

“Yeah, of course,” John says. He sighs, stroking over my knuckles with his thumbs. “I can’t believe it worked out this way. You should have seen your face, though, while Magnussen was flicking me. You were scaring me.”

Feel my eyebrows raise. “And yours?” I counter. “I thought you were two seconds away from killing him with your bare hands.”

He looks rueful. “Fair enough, I suppose.” He checks his watch. “Mycroft said ten minutes,” he says with another sigh. “I’ve got to go. I’m sure Mycroft will tell me exactly how to explain myself to Mary. His people said all of the staged conversations came through loud and clear, so she’ll know that your assignment is supposedly fatal. She’ll think that when you leave, you’ll be out of her way for good.”

“Which should make her calmer, at least until she gets Moriarty’s first message,” I say. I lean my forehead against the bars and John puts his own against mine as he did before. “You should go,” I say, closing my eyes. 

“In a minute,” he says. For a long moment, we stay where we are. “Listen – I’m sure that Mary will be there when they ship you off, so we’ll obviously have to be very careful, but be careful out there, even if it’s only for a few days, all right? Don’t go getting yourself killed. I need you here.”

“I won’t get myself killed,” I say, and it’s a promise. I can’t say the rest of it, say _I’ll never die on you again, John, never jump off a building again, never get shot again. I promise to outlive you, no matter what._ I can’t say it, though, so I don’t and hope he heard it in the silence anyway. 

John puts his mouth on mine again, and for all of the times he’s held back at Baker Street, he doesn’t censor himself now. “I love you,” he says, voice rough and full of emotion. He kisses me again. “Come back to me.”

“I will.” My eyes are still closed as I feel him move away, release my hands. When I open them again, he’s already moving down the hall, a hand at his face. (His eyes? Unsure.) 

I sink to the floor of the cell and settle in to wait. This is it, the crux of the drama. The first three acts have unfolded and played out. Now for the fourth and final act. 

(I have no idea how the story ends.) 

***

The plane slows to a stop on the tarmac. Mycroft was better than his word: Lazarus II is live. Through the window I can see John and Mary talking animatedly, or rather Mary is talking and gesturing and John is watching the plane and speaking calmly. Mycroft’s car is still on the tarmac and he’s getting out of it to come and meet me. 

The ramp unfolds and Mycroft is there. With a pointed look at Mary, he refrains from speaking at all, indicating the car. (I assume I’m just going back to Baker Street but we need Mary to think that I’m going deep undercover within the city or something.)

John and Mary come over, hand-in-hand. John’s face is suitably shocked, but Mary is concealing her panic badly. “How can he be alive?” John is asking me – demanding, really, and it’s good. “He shot himself in the face!”

“People do sometimes survive what should be lethal shots,” I say, shrugging, pointedly not looking at Mary. “Mycroft wants to take me away and fill me in. I’ll call you later, if I can.”

“Please do,” John says, his brow troubled. “You know I’m in, if you could use me.”

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll be in touch.” 

“You’ve got my number,” John says, our eyes meeting briefly, and I know he’s referring to the burn phone Mycroft gave him earlier. I have the number stored under a false name on my phone already. 

“I do.” I close the door, glance at Mary. Unobserved for a moment, her jaw is clenched, face etched with anger. (Hope John will be safe. Mycroft has agents placed carefully around the flat, but she is very good. If she sees anything amiss, the entire game will be up.) 

That evening, I get a text from John’s second number. 

_Have noticed at least three cameras in_  
_the flat that weren’t there before. Hard_  
_to confirm when you’re trying not to look_  
_right at them but I’m pretty sure. When is_  
_she going to get the note?_

I text back. I’ve already written the letter. _Tomorrow. Be careful._

He replies at once.

_I will. You too. Can’t tell you_  
_how relieved I am that you’re_  
_back already, that you never left._

I smile at this. _So I am. Good night, J._

_Good night._

I re-read the Moriarty letter before printing it out. Mycroft delegated it to me because he thought I would capture Moriarty’s style better, having known him better. I have no idea how he might have interacted with Mary, though, so it’s a guess at best. 

_Aubrey darling,_

_You may have heard: I’m not dead. And you, my dear,_  
_have been a bad girl. Unfinished contracts are unfinished_  
_even when the person who hired you seems to be dead, you_  
_do realise. I see you took a shine to Sherlock’s little pet the_  
_day you first clapped eyes on him at the pool. Does he look_  
_taller through a rifle scope, I wonder? The original contract_  
_stands. Sherlock Holmes lives, therefore you’ve got a task_  
_to complete, my dear. Ten million quid and you get to tick_  
_the contract off your list. If you want to quit the game after_  
_that, it’s up to you. You always were my best sniper, though._  
_Think it over. We were good together. Now it seems you’ve_  
_got boring. Who are you hoping to fool, darling? We both know_  
_that’s not who you really are. And John Watson, he’ll notice_  
_before long. That you’re faking it. Put him out of his misery_  
_like a good girl and then we’ll talk. Reply or send proof of the_  
_kill, it’s up to you. Just pop a letter in the box with my name on_  
_it. I promise it will get to me. You know how I am. I’ll be waiting,_  
_Aubrey._

_Jim xo_

I fold it and put it in an envelope, wearing rubber gloves. Mary will know to check. And Moriarty would have used gloves himself. I know what the contracted amount was from one of the other assassins I caught up with, back while I was away. Mycroft and I are counting on the amount to be the same for Mary with John. Only one way to find out, I suppose. I text Mycroft. _Letter’s ready. Let me know when you want it._ At my request, he gave me access to the footage from my parents’ house. I force myself to watch the reconciliation scene and console myself that at least he didn’t kiss her, as he said. I imagine he’s lying beside her now, trying to pretend he still loves her. It’s surprisingly distressing to imagine, even given his behaviour in the holding cells. I spend the night texting back and forth with my brother and checking in with the agents around John’s flat. (Wish we had a feed inside, but with Mary’s surveillance in place, no one could have come or gone without being seen.)

I sleep for four hours toward dawn. Mycroft wakes me with a text to say that they’re delivering the letter. John has just left, supposedly, for the clinic. Mary is now officially on maternity leave as of today, the second of January. John will be spared her presence at the clinic, at least, not that he’s there now. He will have boarded his usual bus and met up with Mycroft’s agents there to be taken to Mycroft’s office. I had asked if John couldn’t just be brought here, but Mycroft insisted John be kept well out of harm’s reach. He does send a car to bring me to the office instead, though. We’re all waiting. Mary hasn’t left the flat yet today. Is she thinking about it? Deliberating? 

Just after noon, she emerges from the flat with an envelope in hand, pregnancy belly in place. She even rests a hand on it now and then, conscious of it the way pregnant women are. A convincing actor, but that’s no surprise. She drops the envelope in the mail box at the end of the street, then goes back inside. 

An agent in a mail truck goes by half an hour later, sifting through the mail until he finds it, delivering it unopened to the three of us. Mycroft opens it and reads aloud. 

“ _Dear Jim,_ ” he begins, eyebrows already high on his broad forehead. “ _How lovely to hear from you. So glad you survived shooting yourself in the head. You never were one to be predictable, were you? About the contract: I’d like to propose a trade. You wanted Sherlock dead, didn’t you? Here he is, alive and well, as you know. He seems to be rather difficult to dispatch. And it was twelve mill, you cheapskate. Don’t try to stiff me now. I may be a little behind schedule on the contract, but you know, you’re right. I’ve got rather fond of_ my _little pet. Leave him alone and you can have Sherlock. A.G.R.A. PS: In public, it’s Mary now. Don’t forget. xx_ ”

John holds his hand out for the letter silently and Mycroft gives it to him. When he’s done, he gives it to me and rubs his eyes. “Wow,” he says. 

“That didn’t take her long to come up with,” I remark. “I think I’m offended. I thought we were friends.”

“And after you gave her that whole alibi, too,” John says, shaking his head. “I would have broken it off with her then and there if you hadn’t interceded on her behalf, and she knows it.”

“Twelve million,” Mycroft remarks. He puts out his hand for the letter, which I give him. “You were worth more than Mrs Hudson or Lestrade,” he says mildly to John. “Flattered?”

John looks at me and doesn’t smile. “I suppose,” he says. 

“He was worth the most to me and Moriarty knew it,” I say tightly. “So: what do we say in response?”

Mycroft nods at the laptop beside me. “You know the plan: send the counter-proposal and arrange a meet.”

“Right.” I pull the laptop onto my knees and begin typing. It’s quite short this time. John watches over my shoulder as I type, and when it’s finished five minutes later, I lean forward and pass the laptop to my brother. “What do you think?”

He reads it aloud. “ _Dear Mary, like the new name. It’s a bit pedestrian, but then you did steal it from a very boring person. It will go well with your boring new life. Let’s meet and talk about it. I have a counter-offer: Holmes and Watson both for twenty mill. Shouldn’t be too hard to catch them together, after all. Come and give me your answer, tonight, 11:00pm, First Fruit Warehousing, North Greenwich Pier, Silvertown. Come round to the shipping doors. I’d say to come alone, but you know me better than that. Don’t even think about staking the place out – my men are already there. And do leave the guns at home. Somewhere where John won’t hurt himself, of course. Jim xo_.” Mycroft looks up over the laptop. “Good, Sherlock. It’s very good. We’ll have it couriered over at once.”

I look at John. “Okay? Any thoughts?”

“You’re a bit too good at sounding like him,” he says, lip twisting. “No other objections, though. I assume you two have a plan in the case that she accepts the counter-offer.”

“Yes,” Mycroft says shortly. “Prison, either way. How long will depend on which option she chooses.”

I glance at John again, then say to Mycroft, “And if she shows up and begs to be allowed out of the contract? What then?” 

Mycroft shrugs. “If she was going to suggest that, she would have said so in her response, or so I imagine. In any case, she’ll find out soon enough that she was set up and then it will depend on her reaction.”

“And you’re still going to speak into some sort of voice distorter thing?” John says to Mycroft. “Maybe you should let Sherlock do that. He’s got Moriarty’s general tone down.”

I touch one finger to his knee. “I’ll need to show myself at some point,” I remind him, but I try to sound gentle. “See if she shoots at me or not.”

“You’ll both be in full body armour,” Mycroft points out. “In fact, Sherlock, you could do it, if you want. She won’t be able to see him either way.”

“And if she does somehow manage to get people in there, like snipers and that?” John asks. “Do you really have it staked out already?”

“I do,” Mycroft confirms. “Any movement and I’ll be alerted immediately.”

John nods, brow furrowed. “But you will be merciful, if she begs out of the contract? I mean – I know she should go to prison for her crimes, but if she shows signs of truly having left that life behind?”

Mycroft looks at me briefly, then says, “Yes, of course. That will be taken into consideration.”

John jerks his chin once. “Thanks,” he says. 

This is troubling to me, but I choose not to say anything about it. An agent comes in wearing a courier uniform to collect the letter. And then we wait. 

***

Mycroft’s car pulls to a stop. It’s ten forty-five and the agents have reported no movement whatsoever. They have been checking in every fifteen minutes on schedule. Mary is not here. Aubrey. It is difficult to think of her as anything but Mary; I have known her too long by that name to change it in my thoughts now. John and I are both wearing body armour under our coats and carrying helmets. She will never see John, unless he decides to confront her after she’s revealed her plans. I, on the other hand, stand a good chance of being shot in the head if she sees me, and she will see me. She won’t make the same mistake twice. I’m far too dangerous to her now. 

Mycroft leads us into the darkened warehouse and over to the side, into the densely dark shadows between some shelving. The only illumination is coming from the security lights outside and the emergency lighting system on inside, dull incandescent lights dotting the circumference of the huge room. A solitary overhead light is suspended directly over the centre of the floor. It’s deathly quiet; there are snipers placed all around the catwalk near the ceiling for added security. Mary’s cover has always been particularly good, I can’t help but think. No one would ever suspect Mary Morstan, of all people, of being a world-class assassin. Cute, despite problematic teeth and badly bleached hair (it’s not bad when it’s been touched up recently). Red coat, false pregnancy belly, whimsical fashion sense (note: whimsical is not usually _good_ by any measure in my books, but somehow I thought it suited Mary). Turned-up jeans. An assassin who collects millions for her kills, yet doesn’t get her trousers properly hemmed. She remains an enigma to me. I understand now about her ex-boyfriend David, the one who looked so uncannily like John, but utterly devoid of everything that makes John so special: it was a practise run, to see if she was capable of sustaining her cover that long. And then she found John again, targeting him differently this time. (She cannot have him. He was mine from the outset.) 

Mycroft turns his head a little in reaction to something in his earpiece. “She’s here,” he tells me, voice low. “Wait until she reaches the centre of the room, in the direct light. Then speak.”

The distorter speaker is programmed to make my voice sound like Moriarty’s, the algorithms matched in the filter. I’ll have to do my best to recreate his eerie shifts of pitch and tempo myself, however. (John has frequently mentioned in the past that I am a very good actor and I like to think it’s true, but this isn’t acting so much as imitation, direct reproduction.) 

The pedestrian door beside the huge corrugated steel cargo doors opens. Mary appears, or rather: Aubrey appears. No red coat, no pregnancy belly. She is dressed precisely the way she was dressed the night she shot me. I inhale sharply despite myself, the mostly-healed wound in my chest giving a pang of reminder, the shock and the pain jolting through my body and mind in memory again. She has a gun, despite what she was told. Her hands are empty but the outline of it is just visible, tucked into the back of her waistband. One of the reasons I find her slightly terrifying is that she does not look like my least idea of assassin. Even dressed this way, she is cute, short, ever so slightly pudgy. Not exactly Mrs Smith, but every bit as deadly – in fact, probably more so. It gives me the shivers. She stops in the middle of the factory, eyes darting around. She doesn’t look frightened, and when she speaks, my deduction is confirmed. “Jim,” she says lazily, not quite calling, not raising her voice that far, but it carries nonetheless. “Where are you hiding, then? I know you’re here.”

I let her wait a moment or two, then speak. The speaker is wired to the factory’s internal sound system. “I’m heeeere, sweetheart,” I say, hearing Moriarty’s voice emit from every speaker in the chamber. It’s startling to _me_ and I’m the one doing it. I’m impressed with Mycroft’s technical monkeys. They’re very good. “I’m all around you,” I continue, inserting Moriarty’s signature singsong pitch. 

Mary stops, jerking suspiciously around. “Where are you?”

“I’m _everywhere_ ,” I say, with Moriarty’s wide-eyed disbelief in my tone. “Can’t you see me?”

“No,” Mary says. “Stop playing games and come out here where I can see you.”

“You brought a gun. Tsk tsk tsk.” I sound theatrically chiding. “I told you not to, but did you listen?” I cant the tone upward at the end, drawing it out longer than it needs to be. “So I’m going to stay where I am, and you can stay where you are, and we’ll talk. So: have you got an answer for me, then? About that little offer I made you?”

“I want to see you,” Mary repeats, stubborn. 

I let my voice harden. “And I wanted John Watson dead the instant you learned of Sherlock Holmes’ survival,” I chastise. “You should be glad you’re even alive. So we’re going to do things my way.”

Mary crosses her arms. “I could just leave.”

I make this extra singsong-y. “No you can’t!” It’s light, insouciant, a joke. 

Mary glares into the darkness around her isolated pool of weak lamplight. “What do you want, then?” she demands. 

“I told you: I want John dead. That was our deal, Mary. That was our contract. John Watson, dead. And is he dead?”

“But it’s Sherlock you’re after,” Mary says, eyes staring into the darkness. Are they playing tricks on her yet? Does she think she sees something moving? “Why not accept my counter-proposal?” 

No talk of wanting out, then. One could be nice and argue that she knows it would be futile to even ask. (I’m finished with being nice to Mary Morstan, however.) “Why not accept mine?” Moriarty’s voice replies to her. “Twenty million quid, Mary. You could settle down in style with that. All you need to do is cut down two little problems of mine and then it’s finished. _Then_ you can get out of the game if you want to.”

Mary thinks about this, head tipped to one side. “Only twenty million for both? Sherlock is only worth eight mill to you, then?”

I chuckle into the speaker. “Oh no, I’d just consider it a package deal, wouldn’t you? It would be child’s play to pick them off together.”

Mary looks as though she could spit nails. “Not any more,” she says, and her voice has gone soft and dangerous. “We’re together again. I’ll drive him away from Sherlock within weeks. I was doing it before and it was working. I’ll do it again. Let me take Sherlock out and then you can leave us alone.”

I-as-Moriarty ignore this. “You’re looking quite trim,” his voice says with a touch of unholy glee through the speakers. “At seven and a half months, I would have thought you’d be showing a little more. Or does he not know yet? You were forced to play that out, weren’t you? He certainly made you wait for it. Bit of a risk, my dear.”

“One that was worth taking,” Mary retorts. “He just needed some time.”

“And yet, you’re clearly not pregnant and it’s too late for a ‘miscarriage’,” I say smoothly. “You should have given up the game sooner. It’s beating you, Mary. It’s beating you!” More of the manufactured glee. 

“You,” Mary breathes, her voice murderous. “Come out where I can see you!”

“Do you know what I have, Mary?” I ask conversationally. “I have exactly what you were afraid of Sherlock finding when he went to Appledore. I’ve got proof on a memory stick I’m holding in my hand, right here and now, that you’ve been accepting payment for being in this marriage all along. Same numbered account that always paid your fees before. Cayman Islands, no questions asked. But I’ve got the papers. Magnussen knew how to get them but I’ve got the real thing. Anything you’d care to say at this point?” This is a gambit: of course I have no such thing. We have no proof of payment, just suspicions. 

Mary swallows visibly. “Are you going to accept my counter-offer or not?”

 _Got you._ She just confirmed it herself. “Not,” I say, pitching it high again. “Double hit or I take this public. Don’t be an idiot. Twenty million, Mary.”

Mary hesitates. “I’ll agree to it if we can shake on it.”

I make another sound of amused disapproval through Moriarty’s manufactured voice. “Do you take _me_ for an idiot, then? Don’t be daft, Mary. We both know that I always win. You shoot me and I’ve got a dozen snipers waiting above you.”

Mary, who has been turning in a slow circle continuously since she arrived, stops now. “Have you?” she asks, her voice soft. Almost dreamy. “All right, then,” she says. “I accept. Double hit. And I want the payment in advance.”

“Half after Sherlock, half after John,” I say. “Start with Sherlock.”

“What do you mean?” She sounds confused. 

I take the helmet with me and emerge from the shadows, still holding the speaker. I step into the circle of light and lift my free hand. “Hello,” I say, Moriarty’s voice echoing out of the speakers all around us. I lower the speaker to my side. 

For a moment she gapes at me. “Sherlock – what are you – what is – ” Her eyes go to the speaker, suddenly understanding. Her entire face changes. “You bastard,” she hisses at me, like a feral cat. “This is entrapment, Sherlock. It’s completely and totally illegal.”

“And you,” I say in my own voice and dropping the speaker, “just agreed to a hit on your own husband.” I put the helmet on and switch on the speaker function. 

Mary doesn’t move for a long time. She swallows. This is where she should deny it, tell me she was only playing for time, but her tongue seems to be caught. She swallows again, then says, “Where is he? Where is John?”

“Here.” Before I can answer, John appears beside me, two metres to my right. He’s only holding his helmet. He sounds hollow. “Are you going to kill me? Only no one’s going to pay you a fee for it.”

Mary’s face contorts. “John,” she says plaintively. “Oh, John… I…”

He points at her belly, or lack therefore. “You’re not pregnant,” he says, in what has to be an award-winning statement of the obvious.

Mary’s face is twisted and crumpled. “No.”

“How were you going to get that by me, then?” he wants to know. “Was she going to die in childbirth, then? You did say the ultrasound said it was a girl, right? Whose ultrasound pictures did you steal?”

Mary doesn’t answer this, her eyes avoiding his. “If you still hadn’t forgiven me by the due date, then yes. I was going to say she died at birth.”

“So that you could use it as guilt to manipulate me into staying with you,” John says. “Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how fucked up that is?” He shakes his head, disgusted. “And I suppose you made Sherlock think you were pregnant in the first place to pull me closer to you and farther from him.”

Mary shrugs. “It worked,” she says, but her voice is bitter. “So. What happens now?” 

“What happens now,” John tells her, his voice and face hard, “is that you’re going to prison.”

“No,” Mary states. She lowers her chin and looks John in the eye. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Mycroft steps out of the shadows now. “I regret to inform you, Ms Adams, but you’re quite surrounded.” His voice sounds thin and metallic through the speaker of his helmet but he’s very calm. 

Mary laughs suddenly. “Check again, Mycroft,” she says sweetly, and the factory erupts in gunfire. I dive at John, covering his head and somehow get his helmet slammed onto his head. Mycroft has hit the ground as well. I feel the impact of a bullet in my back from above and I understand at once: somehow, she’s already taken out all of Mycroft’s agents and replaced them with men of her own. The factory is a death trap. I look up and Mary is standing over us, gun levelled in both hands. “Move,” she says to me, calm and deadly. “On your feet. Hands where I can see them.”

I get up slowly, not daring to look at John. (She can’t kill him. He’s got too much armour on. Remind myself of this anxiously.) “Mary,” I say, and realise I have no idea what there is _to_ say. 

“Shut up, Sherlock. I’m not going to tell you again. You should know better by now than to test me on that.” Mary transfers her aim to John, who pushes himself into a sitting position and raises his hands. 

I’m dimly aware that there is more noise above that just gunfire: propellers. Mycroft has called in the cavalry. The sound of gunfire increases. I can just barely hear John’s voice. “What do you want?” John is shouting. “What the hell do you want from me?”

“I wanted your love!” Mary shouts back. Her chin is crumpled. “All I wanted was a second chance, a clean slate. You couldn’t even give me that.”

John opens his mouth but doesn’t get a chance to speak. Mycroft advances behind Mary, a revolver in hand. “Drop the gun!” he shouts. Somehow the snipers from above have gone silent. “Aubrey Adams, do _not_ shoot!” 

Mary doesn’t move. John gets slowly to his feet, then moves so suddenly I don’t think that anyone of us saw it coming, slapping the gun out of Mary’s hands with such force that he might as well have punched her. His entire frame is shaking with rage. “A second _chance_!” he seethes, his face flooding with colour, visible even in the dim light. “It took you all of ten minutes to agree to kill me for a pay-off. Ten. _Minutes_.” He speaks to Mycroft without taking his eyes from Mary. “Get her out of here,” he spits, and Mycroft comes forward and jerks Mary away by the elbow. 

The cargo doors are open, light flooding in from the headlights of one of the choppers. I look at John and say his name, go to touch his arm. 

He twitches his arm out of my grasp before my hand can reach him. “Don’t _touch_ me,” he snaps, still absolutely furious. 

I withdraw, stung. I go and pick up the loudspeaker without a word and slowly follow Mycroft out toward the car. Mary is nowhere in sight, already bundled away in cuffs, I presume. Mycroft is speaking into his phone, standing near the car. I go to him and only look back to see if John is coming when I’ve reached the car. He is; he comes over to the car and goes around to the far side without a word, his face a storm cloud of rage, and gets in without looking at Mycroft or I. Mycroft meets my gaze over the roof of the car and gives a slight shrug. I don’t respond. There is utter silence in the car on the drive home. Mycroft delivers us both to Baker Street without question, doesn’t even say good night when we get out. I assume he’s realised that John is in no fit condition to speak at the moment and will be in touch later. 

I go upstairs, feeling that everything has turned to ash. Leave my coat on its hook and turn slightly to see what John is doing. That question answers itself at once; he continues upstairs without so much as acknowledging me, the sound of his door closing firmly a moment later. I stand still for several minutes, completely lost and without a single idea of what to do with myself now. After awhile I close the door to the flat and go into my own room. I know that John is upset, but I still feel brushed off. Irrationally upset. He said weeks ago that he didn’t love her any more. He told me only four nights ago in the MI5’s holding cells that he loved me. I can grasp that it isn’t the same, can’t have the same effect on me as it does on him that she was quite prepared to kill me, too: I wasn’t the one she married. I understand that. But we were still in on this operation together, have been for months. 

John’s temper has always been frighteningly strong at times. He gets annoyed easily but only gets genuinely angry, _really_ angry, very occasionally. I learned early on to give him a wide birth and let the anger burn out on its own. This is worse, though. Now is precisely when I feel that having distance like this is the most damaging. That if he doesn’t let me in on this, let me bear some of the weight of it with him, the distance will remain there between us permanently. Why is he shutting me out? He knows that I know how he must feel. I was there after he’d read the memory stick. Is he angry with me? Does he feel that I pushed her too far, in my guise as Moriarty? (Perhaps I should have let Mycroft do that, after all.) I don’t know – can’t know, if John will deny me the data I need to deduce what he’s thinking at the moment – and am miserable. 

I stare into the empty fireplace for two or three hours, then, when I’m one hundred percent certain that John is not going to come downstairs at all tonight, I go to bed. It’s close to four in the morning. Everything feels broken, irreparably so. This is precisely what I feared, that something could go wrong enough during all of this to break us. To change his mind. Despite having finally “won” his operation and rid ourselves of the threats of both Magnussen and Mary, I may lose him, after all. 

***

I wake close to eleven, vaguely aware that what woke me was the sound of the downstairs door closing. Has someone come or gone? Suddenly wide awake and curious, I get out of bed and go to the sitting room. No one. He left, then. I’m at the window a second later, just in time to see John jogging down the pavement, attired in his old jogging clothes. The ones he used to wear to go running ages ago, when we first lived together. I haven’t seen him run at any point throughout the autumn, but now, on the third of January of all times, he’s running. I do have the wit to realise that the weather has nothing to do with it. He’s clearing his head, or trying to. I suppose this is where I’m supposed to be patient with him and just wait for him to come around. If he’s angry at me, all the more reason to give him space until he isn’t any more, I suppose, but I can’t help but wish that he would just give me some sort of sign that things are eventually going to be all right between us. 

I also realise that it’s selfish. I’m only one of the things he has to consider right now. Yet part of me – the selfish part, I presume – doesn’t care all that much and still wants the reassurance. I do know, though, that John is upset on a rather massive scale. It’s possible that it was one thing to read about Mary, read her own file and discover who she was, but to have it thrust in his face like that, literally at the barrel end of her gun after having heard her make a deal with a man who once kidnapped him and rigged him up in enough semtex to bring down several large buildings, would have been difficult. To put it mildly. I understand. I do. I just want him not to shut me out. I don’t want him to associate me with all only the trauma of these events, eventually coming to the conclusion that he needs to cut all of it out and leave it behind. A clean break. That’s just the sort of thing that he would think, too. I fret at the window for an hour, until I see him coming back, then hurtle myself away from the glass before he can catch me at it. Flee into the kitchen, where Mrs Hudson has left the newspapers. Bless her for making one thing around here feel normal. I’ve just managed to wrench one of the papers open at random when John’s footsteps reach the top of the stairs. He comes in through the kitchen door, his step hitching when he sees me. “Morning,” he says, still breathing hard, and disappears down the hall and into the bathroom to shower. 

I feel marginally better. Just over a “morning”. Ridiculous. Nonetheless, I get up and debate for a moment whether he would prefer coffee or tea after a run. Perhaps tea. Obviously he’s not working today, so why would he need the caffeine fix? He prefers tea as a general rule, anyway. I put the kettle on, then look around the kitchen and wonder if I should cook something. It’s after noon. Did he eat breakfast? With me lying asleep in the other room, did he come in here, quietly make something to eat and then sneak off out the door without a word? 

I dislike this intense worrying immensely, feel rather disgusted with myself. I go to the cupboard and peer inside, then the fridge. Shuffle things listlessly, then eventually close the fridge, unable to decide on something to make. If I cook something, perhaps he’ll think I’m trying to force him into eating with me. Sigh. Toast it is. I make tea in the teapot, pour myself a cup and take my toast over to my chair. Neutral territory. He can stay in the kitchen, sit in his chair, go over to the sofa, or even go back upstairs without having to cross paths with me. John exits the bathroom some minutes later, wearing his robe (tightly tied: yes, thank you, I understand _that_ signal just fine). He glances at me, then goes upstairs. I sigh and wait for him to dress and come back, or not come back, as the case may be. 

He does come down after awhile, going straight back into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He checks the temperature of the teapot and pours himself a cup, taking it and the sandwich to the sofa. (I see. Fine.) He’s got the other paper and we sit in our respective spots reading in a silence that’s anything but companionable. He _is_ in the same room, however. Perhaps he’s not angry with me. Being angry in general is perfectly acceptable. I understand. (But I still crave a signal, an indication of some sort.)

After a long while, he breaks the silence. “Has Mycroft been in touch?”

I lower the paper. “No. Not yet.” Actually, this is odd. 

“Ah.” John looks down at the paper spread open over the coffee table. “It’s not in the news yet.”

“No, I know. It probably happened too late,” I say. “That, or Mycroft is deliberately suppressing the story.”

John turns a page, head still down. “I wondered if he would.”

“Do you want him to?”

John goes still, then shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says to the paper. “I just – no. I don’t know. He can do what he likes, I suppose.”

I watch him very carefully for several minutes after this. (Want to ask him if he’s all right. I know he isn’t. What’s the point of asking a question to which one already knows the answer? To demonstrate care, I answer myself. Of course I know that. Still, the question could just provoke his irritation. But which is more important? the other voice argues: provoking John’s irritation or letting him know that he’s cared about? Obvious answer. Still.) “John,” I say slowly, but he doesn’t let me finish. 

“No, Sherlock,” he says firmly, not looking up. “We are not talking about this. Not now. Not yet.”

I close my mouth in frustration. There is literally nothing I can say, then. “All right,” I mumble, cheeks warming uncomfortably. (Perhaps he _is_ angry with me, then. I wish I knew. Reassuring me is probably the last thing on his mind at the moment, I realise. Still. _Still_. Damn it. This is more frustrating than I could have imagined.) 

Silence reigns for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, John watches something ridiculously inane on the television. I text Mycroft, subtly. _I expected we’d be needed today. No?_

Mycroft responds a few minutes later. _Thought John might need a day or two. Sort him out, or let him sort himself out, and then we’ll take statements. No rush._

I write back, _Fine. Are you keeping it out of the news?_

He writes back at once. _Does John want it kept out? I think it should be his decision._

 _Ask him yourself_ , I text back. I send it, then add, _He’s barely speaking to me and I don’t want to annoy him even further._

I can almost feel Mycroft being sympathetic from his flat in Belgravia. If he’s home, that is. I have no idea. It’s simultaneously annoying and comforting. _Just give him time. It’s probably not about you._

I don’t respond, but hear John’s phone ping a few minutes later. He gets it out of his pocket, reads the message, frowns, and puts the phone down on the table without answering. Undecided, then. After awhile he turns off the television and goes to the door. “Good night,” he says. It’s the first thing he’s said in hours, and evidently is going to be the last, at least for today. 

“Good night,” I say to his back, and he disappears up the stairs. 

***

The next three days conform to the same pattern. He runs. He showers. He speaks to me very briefly, usually during the afternoon. When Mycroft comes to take his statement, I go and take a shower to give John some privacy, then go and sit in Mycroft’s car to give my own. Otherwise John is rigid and tense and contained. The tension is wearing on me like an ulcer, but I cannot force the situation. All I can do is wait and wait and wait and then one day, possibly, get an answer as to whether this is too broken to survive. I would do anything, _anything_ to fix it if I knew how. I don’t know how, and it occurs to me that this is because there is simply nothing in my power to fix it. I feel completely helpless, drowning in silent frustration and ever-gnawing anxiety. 

On the fourth day, the seventh of January, something changes. John comes back from his run and is calling my name from the stairs. “Sherlock!” He says it again. “Sherlock!”

I drop the empty mug I was carrying to the kitchen table and bolt to the open door of the flat. “John?”

He barrels into me, all of his weight behind it, and before I know what’s happening, his mouth is on mine, his arms around me and he’s kissing me with force. Once I’ve recovered from the shock of it, my brain kicks in and I reject every single thought about asking him what the hell is going on and devote all of my energy to kissing him back with equal force, my arms winding around his back. He’s warm under his clothes and a bit sweaty, but it’s the clean, healthy sweat of his run, nothing sour to it. If anything, it makes him smell even more like himself and I find it immediately and earth-shatteringly arousing. John’s mouth is hard, too hard, but I’m as desperate for this as he is, so I throw myself into the hurricane of his attack and fight to hold on. He’s got me pushed up against the door frame, pinning me to it. After several long and rather glorious minutes of this, John finally breaks away, panting. (I don’t know what to say, so I wait for him to speak first. I _really_ don’t want to misstep now, and as I’m still rather in the dark about what he’s been thinking and feeling lately, I wouldn’t even know where to begin, or how.) I have no idea where this came from. I just stand there, breathing, looking at him, unwilling to let go of him for as much as a second. 

John moves his hands to my face, holding tightly, and his eyes are dark and deep. “I’m ready for this now,” he says, his voice and face intense, almost as though he’s warning me. “I don’t know if you still think this could work, with everything that’s happened, but – ”

“I do,” I interrupt. (That has to be clear. He needs to understand that before he says a load of ridiculous nonsense.) “John. Of course I do. That’s never been a question. For me, at least,” I add, uncertain of him. 

“Good,” John says fiercely. “Because I want this. I want you. I just – I’m sorry, I needed some time, and I needed some space away from you. I just had to get my head on straight.”

I search his eyes, trying not to let my anxiety show and probably failing spectacularly. “And?” I say, pushing to hear it. “Have you, now?”

“Yes,” John says. “I was running, just trying to let my thoughts sort themselves out, and I got to a point, in the park, where suddenly I knew I was done asking questions and arguing with myself. It all just became totally clear. And simple. So I came home. I want you. I want to be with you. You’re the only good, real thing in my life and I love you.”

This should be good, but it bothers me. “Wait,” I say, frowning. “That makes it sound like I’m just the best of a bad lot. I don’t want to be your default option.” (Truth: I would absolutely accept being John Watson’s default option, but I’d be much happier if it were a great deal more than that.) 

He shakes his head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just mean that, whatever else happens, I know that I’ll always have you. I wish I had known that before you disappeared on me for two years, but I know now that you did it at least partly for me, and I know now how much you love me. What you would do for me. Your caring about me nearly got you killed, _again_. I mean, what if Mycroft hadn’t been able to get you out of the mission in Serbia? What if the agents had gunned you down right there, outside Magnussen’s house? But you did all that for me, and it all came about because I went and married a psychopath. I mean, what does that say about me? Who would want to be with me after that?”

“Me,” I tell him. “I would. Always.”

“But why?” John asks, almost pleading, his eyebrows lifted in the centre and dropping around his eyes. “Who am _I_?”

I lean in to kiss him again but stop just short of his lips. “You’re John Watson,” I say, my voice dropping lower. “That’s all you need to be. You’re… perfect.”

He makes a desperate sound and closes the tiny distance between our mouths and practically climbs into my trousers. Somehow we manage to stagger to the bedroom, tripping over ourselves and I slam the door closed with one foot even as John’s hands are ripping at my clothes. Have never cared less about buttons in my life. It’s hard to concentrate on stripping John of his things when he’s distracting me this way, his mouth on every bit of newly-revealed skin, hands dipping below the waistband of my trousers and into my underwear, but eventually we’re both more or less naked. I bend to pull my socks off and John presses my face into his belly, so I kiss it. I’m harder than I think I’ve ever been in my life and we’re just standing next to the bed, craned around each other, kissing everywhere. My lips on his sternum, his hip, the starburst scar on his left shoulder, the base of his neck. His mouth claims territory on my bullet scar first, then a place under my right ear followed by my right bicep, then my rib cage, my belly. I don’t quite remember lying down but we’re on the bed now, still twining, writhing around each other, exploring, kissing, touching, and it feels like something new. Like unwrapping a gift whose contents you haven’t guessed (and I cannot remember the last time that happened). John pushes me gently onto my back and spreads himself over me, straddling my hips and bending to kiss my throat. My erection is pressing into the cleft of his arse, John’s nearly flat against his stomach, thick and flushed dark with arousal. We haven’t had sex of any sort since the time in the kitchen when we were making dinner, nearly three weeks ago now. He was right, though: it’s different now, on this side of Mary. 

His eyes are hooded in undisguised desire and I want him so badly I can barely breathe. “John,” I manage to say. “I want you in every way I can possibly imagine.”

John inhales sharply. “Me too,” he breathes, just above a whisper. “How do you want me, right now? We can do _anything_. I just want to be with you. Properly this time. All the way, I mean.” 

He’s being vague but I can certainly deduce what he means by _that_. My penis gives a throb of desire against his arse. “Can we…?” I begin, hesitant to articulate it. I try again, putting my hands on his hips. “Could we do… this?” I ask. Have never thought about this in terms of top versus bottom, dominant versus submissive. Why does one person have to be one and one person the other? I want to do everything in the book with him and then write volume II ourselves. If it’s going to be me within him this time, then I want him inside me the next. There is no part of myself which I will keep off-limits from him. Not now, not after all of this, and all this time waiting for it. It’s quite possible he has strong feelings about sexual positions, though. I wouldn’t know, not yet. I intend to find out.

My worries are apparently misplaced. “God, yes,” John says, when he realises what I’m asking about. He bends over and kisses me again for a long time, beginning to rub himself against me. When his pulls his mouth off mine, he whispers, as though in confession, “Honestly, I was sort of hoping you would say that. The first time, I just… I want to feel like it’s really, really different. This way I can’t pretend it’s anything other than what it is. Not with you in me.”

I simultaneously resent the very notion that he might have been tempted to think it was Mary (or any other woman) he’s with if he’s the one doing the penetrating, yet am glad to hear him say it. So: this is how we will establish ourselves, then. I feel the corner of my lip twist in self-deprecation. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I admit. 

“Neither do I, which is also why this is the best choice,” John announces. He lips at my chin. “I assume you have lube here somewhere,” he murmurs. 

His penis is lying directly against mine and it’s difficult to formulate speech at the moment. “Uh – top drawer – ” I get out, trying to hold back from rutting too obviously against him. It’s a stretch by he manages to reach it. I think of something else. Awkward to mention, but then, he’s a doctor. Surely it will have occurred to him. “Er – do you want me to wear a – ” I’m not even sure if I have any prophylactics, honestly. The last time I purchased any were directly related to an experiment for which I required hand coverings with thinner latex than standard gloves. (Can still remember the knowing smirk of the cashier and having wanted to say something vicious to her. It’s possible that I did; don’t remember. Don’t care about that now.) 

John is looking down at me very seriously, and worse, he has stopped moving against me. His penis is still quite erect and still touching mine (good) but he’s gone still. “Tell me something once and for all, Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “Are you or are you not a virgin?”

Feel heat sting the tops of my cheeks. “Does it matter?” I want to avert my eyes, but his are holding mine inescapably. 

“Yes,” John says, simply, but it’s a brick wall statement. He waits. 

(I wanted him to think I wasn’t. I scramble mentally for a second or two, then realise that this is _real_ , not a game or manipulation to make him jealous. This is happening. I don’t need to try to tweak his opinion of me any more. He knows what I am. And I don’t want to lie to him any more, don’t want to start this, _this_ on a patent untruth. It’s too important. John is too important. I can’t lie to him any more and I don’t even want to.) “Yes,” I admit quietly, the old shame nudging at my rib cage from within. 

It was the right thing to say, it seems. John’s forehead knots with emotion and he bends over me so that our mouths are nearly touching. “Are you planning to ever have sex with anyone but me?”

“No,” I manage, my throat dry, starkly honest. 

“Me neither,” John says, just as quietly. “And I tested myself a couple of weeks ago. After we started. Just to be sure. Because I knew then that when the time came, I wouldn’t want anything between us. Never again.” He lowers his mouth to mine, kisses me the way I’m discovering I like the best, slowly and sensuously, in full body contact, then says, his voice rough with lust, eyes dark above me, “Now put your cock in me. Don’t tell me I don’t know what I want now, because I absolutely fucking do. I want you inside me.”

I moan before I can help myself. He lets me have the lubricant. I don’t know precisely what I’m doing but I am somewhat certain that an erect penis cannot possibly fit without some measure of preparation. I pull John hard against me as our mouths come crashing back together, our cocks rubbing frantically together trapped between us. How fortunate that I am as dextrous as I am, even with my attention rather badly compromised. I drop the lubricant and begin massaging John’s arse with my right hand, pulling him apart and sliding the middle finger of my left hand into that secret, private place within him, pushing gently against his opening until it accepts me into him. It’s rather like John himself: difficult to gain access to, but intensely magnetic, warmer than one could believe possible, and sexy as all hell. John is moaning and writhing against me, already pushing back on my finger. 

“God,” he says thickly. “I had no idea it would feel _that_ good, and you haven’t even – ” (I haven’t found his prostate yet, is what he’s saying, not that I was actively looking for it, not yet, but the suddenly curiosity drives me to find it out now. Is this it, this small nub against my finger tip?) John’s voice cuts off as though he’s being strangled, which is followed by a cascade of profanity. “Oh God, oh Jesus,” he pants. “Shit, _shit_ , fuck yes, God!”

Feel myself smirking despite myself. ( _That_ was a good reaction!) “Like that?” I ask, meaning it both ways. 

He’s writhing, shoving himself back onto my finger. “Another,” he commands, and I bite my lip to keep from reacting vocally to that. I do like it when he gets imperative. 

“Does it hurt?” I ask, obeying his dictum, because I’m curious. I intend to repeat his experience within the next twenty-four hours if at all possible – hopefully quite a bit less. It certainly doesn’t appear to be painful, but I want to hear his reactions aloud. 

He gives me a half-grin that’s more arousing than it has any right to be. “It’s tight, but I like it,” he says. “It feels bloody amazing.” He closes his eyes as I push my fingers deeper, waiting for his body to relax. His penis is oozing against his stomach and I want to put my mouth on it again. (I will. Later, I’ll do everything. Anything he wants, anything we can possibly think of. We’ll do all of it. No holds barred.) John opens his eyes. “That’s enough,” he says. 

I’m still on my back, John bent forward over me. He puts his mouth on mine, our cocks touching again. I’m so hard that the touch is almost unbearable. “John,” I breathe. “I…”

“Say it,” John orders, lips still on mine. “I want to hear you say it.”

“I need you.” It tumbles out of my mouth before I can filter it, examine it. 

A fierce kiss, and then he’s sitting up and away from me. “You can have me,” John says fervently. He finds the lubricant and squirts some onto his fingers, careless in his haste. He reaches behind himself and wraps a slick fist around my erection, making me gasp helplessly, colours thrumming behind my eyes. Should warn him against that if he wants me to last long enough to be inside him, but he stops before I need to, lifts and holds me to himself, lining things up, then slowly, slowly works himself down onto me. We’re both moaning, my hands grasping hungrily at his flexing muscles of his thighs as his body contracts and shudders around me, sparks singing at the edges of my vision. He is hotter than fire, and I feel like a skyscraper within him, harder than diamond and every nerve glittering. When I’m fully inside him John waits a moment, sweat beading his forehead, then puts his hands on mine, slides our fingers together. Our eyes meet. I feel laid utterly bare before him, and make no attempt to change that. No filters. No disguises. Not now. When the spasms in his body stop, we begin to move in tandem; my hips lift off the bed to thrust into him, careful at first, and he bears down on me to meet each thrust. It starts this way, slowly, cautiously, but the tightness, the friction is golden, spreading throughout me and it’s becoming hard to restrain myself. John evidently feels the same way. The caution dissipates, unneeded, and our movements become harder, faster.

After a bit John reaches back and pulls at my thighs. “Can you – bend your knees,” he says. I comply so that my thighs are cradling his arse and back and the shift in angle proves quite worthwhile. John groans so loudly that Mrs Turner’s married ones will certainly have heard it if they’re home and keeps his hands on my thighs, bracing himself. He goes still and lets me thrust up into him, becoming frantic. My orgasm is looming, threatening to burst over me any second now, but I don’t want it to take me before John’s catches up with him. John seems to hear my thoughts, or else our bodies are just in sync; he takes one hand off my legs and begins jerking at his penis, so hard it looks painful and I’m clenching my fingers on the hard bone of his hips as I pound into him, helpless to let go, certainly to stop or hold back now, every muscle in my body and face tensed. I stop breathing as John groans again, his body tightening sharply around me and I’m lost, coming into him in a prolonged outpouring of colour and light and sound, my entire body wracked with glorious sensation, breath and voice gushing from my throat even as the liquid rush of my release floods John’s body. 

Over my pounding heartbeat I’m barely register that he’s panting my name, his wet hand covering mine on his thigh. My entire body is going limp but I move my other hand to his shoulders and pull myself up to him, my softening penis still within his body, and put my arms around him, kissing him for long minutes, his chest heaving against mine. (Feel an intense need to bond with him, chemically or otherwise, to have every part of myself touching every part of him. It _is_ chemical, and knowing that changes not one thing about its significance. I’ve known for some time what love feels like, thanks to John, but I have never felt is as intensely, as deeply as I do now. If he thought I would kill for him, die for him before, he could be frightened by what I wouldn’t do for him now. There are no limits.) 

John unbends his legs and gets them behind my back, cradling me. He puts his hands on my face and leans his forehead against mine. I can feel the pulse of his heartbeat in his fingers, it’s still so hard. “God, I love you,” he says heavily. “Sherlock. Jesus Christ. Who ever knew it could be like this, with us?” 

“I know,” I murmur. There’s nothing silly about it, though I can hear the inner voice that wants to scoff at this notion. (Cold, pure logic can go sod itself about now. This is _John_. My John. Finally.) “I love you,” I say instead, again. It seems an appropriate time to say it. 

“You know I love you,” John says back. “I’ll tell you every day for the rest of our lives.”

“Please,” I say, and kiss him again. It’s officially the best day of my life. 

***

Mycroft visits later, after supper. It was inevitable, I suppose. I discover that I’m so happy that I almost don’t care. My hair is still wet from the shower we took before we ordered in; after having spent all afternoon in bed, it was necessary. My brother takes one look at both of us, seated in our own chairs and a healthy distance apart (much too far, if it comes to that), and knows immediately. 

“I see that congratulations are in order,” he says dryly, pulling one of the desk chairs around and crossing his legs at the knee. He’s trying to sound mean but it’s not as gruff as he clearly meant it to be. 

I ignore his comment either way, smiling over at John, who is smirking and not being particularly subtle about it. “Why the visit, O brother mine?” I inquire mildly. 

“Bit of business, I’m afraid,” Mycroft says, pulling out one of his ubiquitous files. He opens it on his knee. “I’m not sure whether you’ve heard, but the body of Janine Riordan was discovered a few days ago. Almost certainly the work of Magnussen’s men. Cause of death was poison; Ms Hooper has the autopsy report should you wish to see it. I don’t know whether you actually considered yourself legally engaged to her, but she evidently considered it legally binding. Obviously the ring she wore should by all rights be returned to you, and in addition to that, it seems she had recently purchased some property. As the purchase was made after she became engaged, it is therefore considered half yours and upon her death it passes to you.”

“Property,” I repeat, frowning at him. “What are you talking about? And why? My name wouldn’t have been on the deed.”

“Nonetheless,” Mycroft says. “Unless you want a longwinded speech on estate law in Great Britain – ”

“We don’t,” John puts in. 

“ – then I suggest you simply accept that I know whereof I speak and leave it,” Mycroft finishes seamlessly. He reaches into his briefcase and withdraws both the ring box and a legal-sized envelope containing several thick sheets of A4. Without looking at them, he passes both items over. “Sussex Downs,” he says. 

Ah. The memory clicks. I look the document over. Janine’s name is on it, alone, but I assume that Mycroft does know what he’s talking about. “Will the deed be rewritten in my name, then?” I ask. 

“Yes, of course,” Mycroft says. He looks at John. “I hate to bother you,” he says in tones of overly polite sarcasm, “but would there be any chance of a cup of tea?”

John glances at me, clearly seeing that Mycroft just wants him to leave the room. “Er, yeah, of course,” he says. He goes to switch the kettle on, then takes himself upstairs. 

When he’s disappeared, I look at Mycroft. “I want his name on it, too.”

“I assumed,” Mycroft said. “So: that’s all sorted, is it?”

I smile. “Yes.”

“I’d lecture, but it seems you’re both rather revoltingly happy about it.” Mycroft studies me a moment. “In fact, that’s the reason I… managed this,” he says, nodding toward the deed in my hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of having it inspected and assessed. It’s in very good condition, quite habitable. There are some beehives on the grounds, but I thought I’d leave it up to you to decide whether to keep them or leave them.” He pauses, then continues. “You realise, of course, that the trauma of all of this business will stay with him. It’s not finished that easily, Sherlock. He’s been through a considerable amount in the past few years.”

I could say something biting about what Mycroft could possibly know about the nature of human trauma in general, or John Watson’s in particular, but decide not to. Besides, he has a point. “Yes,” I say shortly. “I know.”

Mycroft nods at the deed again. “It’s a gift,” he says quietly. “Of course that’s not how inheritance laws work, but I thought it could be useful for you. Take him there and look after him.”

I go still, then lift my eyes from the page and look at my brother for a long moment. Leave it to him to make his blessing as dramatic as anything else he ever does. John’s footsteps are on the stairs; he’s heading back into the kitchen to set about making the tea. I nod. “I will,” I tell Mycroft, and it’s a vow. 

Mycroft favours me with a slight smile. “Good,” he says. He gets to his feet and raises his voice. “On second thought,” he says, “I’d better be off. Thanks anyway.”

John sounds surprised. “Oh, really? All right, then.” He comes out of the kitchen and looks at Mycroft’s proffered hand. He looks a little nonplussed but shakes it. “Good night, then.”

“Good night, Dr Watson,” Mycroft says formally, and takes himself off. 

John looks at me once he’s gone. “What was that about, then?” he asks me. 

I smile at him. “He gave us something,” I say. 

John lifts his brows. “Oh yeah? What did he give us?”

“Come here,” I tell him. “I’ll show you.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Quick thanks to yaycoffee for the hand-holding as this beast of a story had hold of me. :)


End file.
